Pure Good Governance

We are both privileged and unprivileged to live in these interesting times where electoral politics seems to be taking the angle of an elitist pass time for a cabal of a wealthy few.    As at October 2010 when the Electoral Commission opened for nomination of directly elected MP candidates, Uganda had a population of about 34 million people with 50% of this population being above 18 years.   Mathematically, this means that well about 17 or so million citizens qualified by age as potential candidates to run for elective offices.     However, out of such an enormous figure, only about 1,700 individuals offered themselves to run for the available 380 parliamentary seats.   This represents only 0.01% of the potential candidates and about 0.001% of the total population.    Various reasons may have contributed to this glut.   According to a friend who ran for an MP position in the Western region, one requires about three hundred million shill...

Every time a super-raging debate on piercing issues like corruption comes up, the NRM members of parliament are urgently called to Kyankwanzi for ‘sedation’.   While retreating, the anesthetic care involves light presentations focusing on how to navigate the winds of censure against the corrupt ‘NRM historical members’, meat roasting, donning military fatigue, engaging in trivial physicals and generally merry making.   Kyankwanzi seems to have become a political dispensary specializing in issuing political paracetamol instead offering any serious curative remedies for pressing national issues. No doubt a similar malady is experienced around most of our government medical centers which either have no medicine or specialize in the issuance of paracetamol even for the popularly known ravaging diseases. Today Uganda is facing a host of national ailments including run-away inflation, spiraling corruption, malignant mismanagement of national resources, compounding unemployment, ...

We are very privileged to live at a time when Uganda is experiencing high political turbulence.   Even with the increasingly narrowing space for alternative voice in the country, Uganda still carries the title of a ‘good-governed, multiparty democratic country’.   As you might realize, democracy has lately become like an ISO certification of quality for states.   If one wants to market a product called Uganda, they are compelled to slap a seal of ‘democracy’ to make the country more appealing to investors, tourists, donors, diplomatic calls, and possibly, hoodwink its very own citizenry about the quality of governance in the country.   Elections today have become too ritualistic, symbolic, periodic events that many times usher in premeditated leaders at the top echelon of the state.   While elections must underpin characteristics of competition, surprise, and anxiety over results, here they have become a simply calculated affair for authentication of certai...

We are fortunate to live in Uganda, a country where it is easy to take the right to vote for granted. Uganda has conducted eight direct general elections at both presidential and parliamentary levels from 1961. Elections conducted between 1961 and 1980 all had a common red thread – perceptions or realities of vote rigging.   The perceived or reality of rigging in the December 1980 elections was the key reason for the five year guerilla war fare.  Though relatively calm, the post 1980 elections of 1996; 2001; 2006 and 2011 have all been marred by allegations or realities of military interference, bribery, coercion, manipulation, violence and a host of other electoral malpractices – all of which have subsequently negatively impacted on citizens’ right to freely express themselves through the power of the vote.   In reflection this brings to mind a statement once made by former Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin who said:   It is enough that the people know there was a...

I spent my eid el fitr reading literature on some of the world’s one time powerful men – Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.   This was not because they are my inspiration figures in any way but because I wanted to have a clear understanding of how they maneuvered to become the world’s most powerful leaders of their time; and why they later one earned themselves a position as the most hated men who have ever lived on earth till today.   Interestingly, both men rose to power as uncontested darlings of Europe and the world at large but were later stoned to death like chicken thieves by their very own citizens.   Borrowing from William Shakespeare’s description of the seven stages of human life,   I think there are also seven ages of a leader – the first being that where a leader is more or less an embodiment of fresh ideas, charisma, action, strength, focus and drive.   The seventh stage then describes a time where a leader is exhausted, has lost focus of long t...