Pure Good Governance

Something spectacular is lingering in the air and this is in respect to the 2016 elections.  Everyone is trying to make sense of what it is or better still what it will be.  The opinion polls, the political analyses, the media debates and dialogues are all part of the effort to figure out how the 2016 poll is likely to play out.   Campaign platforms are supposed to originate from real issues that confront people.  In many countries however, we have seen political figures sometimes artificially constructing the issues so that they can have seemingly ‘credible’ platforms on which to premise their campaigns.  I am talking about the irony of creating a problem so that you can provide the solution! That is just exactly what is gaining currency in many parts of the world today.   Forget about the clean authentic ancient Greek elections where those aspiring to stand for political office would spend time understanding people’s real issues.  Today, e...

On this sunny December afternoon, I decided to take a stroll from home down to the spring well. First to reconnect with childhood memoirs of fetching water, climbing mango trees, playing at the well, but also to enjoy the serenity of the avenue. Right below Kabalega Primary School is our home.     The place has an ambiance created by the mango trees that grace the sides of the sizeable path to the well.  As I took my leisurely mid-day walk, I met a good old man, a cross-generation friend – Ibona Portaz.    Ibona has been fetching water from the Kabalega spring well for the last forty years and does it for a living.  Ibona last saw me when I was a little boy riding my tricycle around the village in the company of my big brother.  Immediately after the greeting formalities, Ibona engaged me in a conversation that vividly brought to life lost time and evoked real childhood pleasures and pains. He reminded me of the days when a child bel...

In fields such as research, those inclined to disputing given research findings will always latch on to the ‘methodology’. In elections, however, it is overly becoming the question of the integrity of the ‘voters register’.  Since 1996, the question of how clean and credible the voters register in Uganda is has come to the fore not once or twice but several times – both from voices that take active part in the elections as voters or candidates and those that at times stand and look from a distance – the election observers. Despite the semblance of normalcy in the May 9 th 1996 Presidential elections in Uganda, hundreds of voters were turned away from the polling stations across the country on account of their names missing from the voters roll – actually, the real complaint was that their names which had originally been on the 1994 Constituency Assembly (CA) voters register had been omitted from the 1996 ‘corrected version’ of the national voters roll.  The...

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...