The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
COMMENT | Olivia Nalubwama | Corruption in Uganda has a thriving soft life despite the endless haranguing by President Yoweri Museveni.
Museveni and his audience have lost count of the number of times he has promised to do something about corruption. He has talked about corruption (even walked about it), christened the corrupt ‘parasites’, frowned in disgust at them, and declared war against them.
Yet, corruption remains lucrative and unapologetic. This year has seen online activism ramp up the noise about corruption. With the increasing repression of civic space, Ugandans have turned to social media to demand accountability and call out impunity. From exposing the extortion rackets at Entebbe International Airport, shaming public authorities over the dismal state of the capital city, the ailing health sector to the roaring parliamentary corruption, Ugandans have let their internet data do the talking – safely.
The ripples of the online Uganda Parliament Exhibition are still reverberating. At the height of it when mere mortals, those quisling Ugandans, demanded that the speaker of parliament Anita Among respond to the calls for accountability, they received robust derision.
Deplorably, the President, like the wind beneath the Speaker’s wings, derided those spearheading the exhibitions as agents of foreign imperialism. Therefa, when the president takes to the podium to rail repeatedly against corruption, one wonders if he will ever face the man in the mirror and stop passing the buck.
Given the extravagance of the budgets of the State House and the Office of the President, surely there are more than enough mirrors in the gilded corridors of the presidency. Regime apologists are buoyant about the trickle of members of parliament (MPs) currently facing corruption charges. However, remarks from the speaker in defense of ‘her MPs’ remind us why corruption lives the soft life in Uganda.
The Government of Uganda, which boasts of a directorate for Ethics and Integrity, complete with a ministerial post, is yet to push back against the speaker’s blatant promotion of corruption. Speaker Among, alongside MP Juliet Kinyamatama, showed how little they think of Ugandans and the importance of good governance when they publicly announced that corruption is not too bad if the corrupt who “steal from Ugandans, share with Ugandans” (SUSU).
The logic of SUSU as we saw in the previous article (The Observer June 26 ‘Kinyamatama: Newest poster child of SUSU – Steal from Ugandans, Share with Ugandans’) follows the president’s counsel to the longsuffering inspector general of Government (IGG). The President has ‘guided’ that if we go hard against the corrupt with lifestyle audits, we will scare the corrupt from investing their loot in Uganda.
The logic is presidential. Political pundits posit that corruption is the lubricant that keeps the huge and unwieldy yellow bus going. They opine that corruption is the method to the madness that is the NRM regime. To face the man in the mirror and do the hard and dirty work of fighting corruption would ‘unalive’ the regime.
The president himself seems at odds; how to fight corruption without actually fighting corruption. He has taken to yet another anti-corruption unit under the ever-expanding Office of the Presidency. One might wonder why the president does not turn to the existing anti-corruption institutions like the IGG or the police.
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Olivia Nalubwama is a “tayaad Muzukulu, tired of mediocrity and impunity” smugmountain@gmail.com
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE OBSERVER
