Museweri/NRM Cannot defeat corruption

Museveni cannot defeat corruption

This topic of corruption is probably a bitter pill to share since it lacks in form and shape and is invisible. Corruption is pervasive and very relative in that it is a vice, a tool and a product of our social systems. Corruption has become an efficient mode of production; it produces fake political system, middle class and economy boom. It is a tool used by immoral agencies to obtain their ends and sustain it. Corruption is now self producing since it governs all subtle forces that shape our society.

The paradoxes of this entity – corruption – are the common understanding that everything in Uganda happens by means of corruption and every product in the Ugandan market arrives there through corrupt means. This is the reason we have seemingly incompetent civil servants; loads of fake, dangerous and expired goods in our markets; selective or partial application of justice and a sick society that cannot adequately cater for its ailing masses.

Take for instance the ongoing saga involving the former Vice President, Bukenya. This is a man who postured himself as the shadow of the person of the President; he mimicked everything, from the swagger of the President, to his styles of speech, expressions, hand-eye movements to hairstyle. In essence, Bukenya was duplex of the person of Museveni.

During the CHOGM meetings, some decisions had to be made and those decisions involved lots of money that taxpayers would have to bear its burden in the future. A lot of these men; well educated and experienced in the matter of proper functioning of society, rule of law and bureaucratic mechanism through which governments should properly function misappropriated the funds.

Given the allures of the resources at hand to be distributed, their conscience naturally faulted because they are noble savages. Whatever happened therein remains sub judice and I cannot explicate it any further. My point of interest is that when the ink went dry on those forged receipts and influenced purchases, only VP Gilbert Bukenya, a.k.a Mahogany had a neck on the guillotine to fathom.

What remained strange was that while the VP faced the humiliation of being hunted down like a Yankee Bandit and getting incarcerated by the IGG, the powers that be looked the other side. Bukenya was all left alone to pay the price for expediency while the real power brokers and the thieves basked in glee with appointments, promotions and protection.

Had Bukenya not made a strong statement that he participated in allocating the CHOGM funds on behalf of, and as an executive member, his case would have been obvious.  Bukenya’s request for minutes of executive meeting was therefore very dangerous and a turning point. The case had come so close to expose all the mafias in government. Naturally, Museveni had to speak out to protect “his” lieutenants from public scrutiny. Like Wandira Kazibwe whose dams became too philosophical, Bukenya now becomes the sacrificial lamb on the alter to rinse the sins of the members of the dangerous power matrix.

So, we looked at how Museveni plays with power and how in that sway, corruption becomes embalmed into the fabrics of society as a political medium. It is justified by executive decree such that those who belong to the ruling political fold become impervious.

But the basis of legitimacy of the ruling system is rooted in the very vice of corruption - for Museveni’s regime is a product of it. One cannot therefore claim to fight the very machination, the process and material from which he or she is a product. This reminds me of JJ Rousseau who posited that humans, by nature are a kind of “noble savages” and that society and social contracts corrupts this nature.

Even then, the current state of corruption and rampant societal malfunction in Uganda defies what Locke projected of a nation-state being efficient tool of raising humanity out of deplorable states of existence. Indeed, the Ugandan state under Museveni has mutated into what Locke described as an abominable institution compared to the relatively benign unmodulated state of nature. I contend that Museveni has no capacity whatsoever to end corruption else he subverts his own government. Period!

END.