Prime
Poverty, greed and the lure of NRM cash
Writer: Gawaya Tegulle. PHOTO/NMG
What you need to know:
- ‘‘The President is consistently setting bad precedent for future generations”
We can begin with a few admissions. First would be that life in Uganda is generally tough; turns out that from time to time, even the lions find themselves having to munch on grass, carrot and cabbage if they must survive.
When salad replaces steak on the menu of the king of the carnivores, you know push has come to shove! The economy can be that hostile.
Second is that there is plenty of money going around, nearly all of it dubiously picked from the public purse, to fund or more precisely, to buy the National Resistance Movement, NRM’s, continued stay in power.
And when lots of money finds its way into a hungry public spectrum, people’s hearts are wont to fail them; they will abandon their convictions and silence their consciences in order to make a quick, easy buck.
Welcome to Uganda! There just might be a third: we are in a generation where greed holds sway; it is one thing to be corrupt because of an urgent need that is hanging over your head – quite another when you are simply a case of greed. A need can be met after a loot or two; but greed can never be satisfied.
There was a time I could firmly stand and declare that “we the opposition” are saying this or that.
Not anymore. I can only speak for myself nowadays.
When, a few years ago, President Museveni said by 2021 there would be no opposition, many people took it as the foolish and ill-advised vow of a man too full of himself to behold, to perceive naked reality.
Now, looking back carefully and also looking around, I am hard-pressed to fault the President.
Two months ago, as I was walking out of a government office, having represented a client in a commission of inquiry, a senior lawyer whose chambers are in the same building took me aside for a coffee.
He said the inquiry reminded him of the time he faced something similar in Parliament some years back.
Later, he also narrated how the leader of the committee had asked for shs 3 billion to settle the matter quietly.
When he told me who it was, I was very disappointed – not because it was such a big name, one of those people look up to for national redemption – but because it was the umptieth time I was hearing a similar story, about him and other key opposition figures.
A few weeks later I met another parliamentarian who was laughing at me for resisting their call to join the ruling party yet my senior colleagues in the opposition were “eating” with the NRM.
He cited an example of the age limit debate a few years ago and declared that only four opposition MPs did not accept the bribe from the ruling party – a story which I have cross-checked thrice and gotten the same result.
It is amazing how much you can find out by simply talking to people in the echelons of power.
Either someone is authoring the stories and circulating them so that people read from the script, or things are truly happening and they are a public secret.
From the evidence on table, it does seem that we, the people, absolute ignoramuses and a little foolish and naïve at that, are busy applauding many as vanguards of the opposition, and all the while, they are quietly eating money from the ruling party to make decisions that favour the latter.
Being in the opposition is not really about what party colours you don; it is about the principles you espouse.
And it is about your willingness to stand up for those principles, even when so doing makes you unpopular.
In the Ugandan context it means you are diametrically opposed to what the ruling party – in power for nearly 40 years now – espouses, in as far as its standpoint works against national interest, rule of law, good governance and democracy.
That is why it does seem we have a small number of opposition MPs in NRM and so many ruling party MPs in the “opposition”.
Christmas is about God loving the world and sacrificially sending His Son to redeem it. May this season be a good time to reflect; and to refresh our love for this country.
Happy new year good people!
Mr Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda [email protected]
