I contend that NRM has outlived its purpose

 POLITICS

There seems to be a general and yet not-so subtle consensus that the NRM regime has completely outlived its usefulness. At least events in the last week illustrate so.

The arrest and subsequent extra-judicial detention of a little known author, Vincent Nzaramba over his publication “People Power: Battle the Mighty General” was one event that put the NRM regime on the global slide over its human rights record. This arrest became a historical landmark and signature of the NRM on its record of repressing intellectual rights. This is not the first time they have harassed an author who is critical of the tyranny. In October of 2010, Dr Kobusingye’s Book, “The Correct Line”, was also impounded and copies confiscated. Other notable authors and intellectuals like Editor Andrew Mwenda and others have been occasionally detained and harassed by state agencies for being openly critical of the excesses of the regime.

President Museveni was also on the spotlight, albeit, with his trademark mockery of Ugandans. The DM reported three interesting stories; two on September 21 (See: Museveni, Mbabazi join Entebbe by-elections and, Oil becoming diversionary - Museveni) and the other on 22 (see: Museveni says NRM firm to supply sugar).

While at Entebbe for the campaign in a by-election pitting DP’s Muhammed Kawuma against NRM flag bearer, Patience Tusimire Mubangizi, Museveni was quoted to have blamed the opposition groups for the chronic power outages that have plagued the nation. In the second article, Museveni was in Hoima commissioning a school laboratory at Canon Njagali High School. It was reported that Museveni persuaded the Banyoro to desist from the allure of investing in the oil industry. He advised them to continue investing in their traditional subsistence forms of agriculture.

In the third article,  Museveni issued statement to the press prior to his departure to India, in which he seemed to have switched position on the sugar deficiency in Uganda by blaming “greedy traders” for the short supply of sugar and threatened that only NRM firms would be contracted to supply sugar to Uganda.

These three stories illustrate the perils of political dishonesty of this NRM regime. It is obvious that Museveni has long pursued objectives outside NRM ideology. If Mueveni remorselessly blames the opposition for the power outages and persuades indigenous Ugandans not to invest in oil industry, then we are inclined to conclude that his agenda is mutually exclusive and suspect. The opposition groups are so small and have been largely ineffective in shaping policies and its implementation at every level of government in Uganda in the last three decades.

Further, electricity crisis in Uganda is historically situated in privatization policies of NRM and their IMF/WB mentors. When Museveni doled out Uganda Electricity Board to his croonies, his assumptions were that a private sector player would provide better services to Ugandans. What is also obvious is that mostly NRM leaning investors and agencies are the ones who have been central in brokering most raw deals that Ugandans have ended up with. In the case of Umeme, there are no competitors.

In Museveni’s Uganda of today, most business transaction are conducted by NRM insiders and they influence quite a bit of decisions as to who takes what. Any opposition leaning or independent minded individuals are practically excluded or detained. In that case, NRM agents and firms are the sole producers and perpetuators of corruption. They brood, reproduce and sustain corruption in the pretext of pursuing NRM agenda.

Given the above, one would wonders how the opposition have interfered with power generation and whether there would be any difference in who imports sugar or not because Museveni or NRM have no control over its corrupt machinations. What this translates to me is that, the so-called NRM leaning firms are those that will be fronted by Museveni’s children, relatives and obviously, the regular notables who are already webbed in the corruption chains.

Museveni should accept his failures and permit the proliferation of new ideas and mindsets that will salvage Uganda from its current predicament. Museveni and NRM have proven that their time is up!

END. 

Biomedical Models of Healthcare has let Uganda down

 Health,

The subject of maternal mortality and rising fistula cases in Uganda truly underpins the failures of biomedical healthcare model. Although there is an elaborate healthcare structure in Uganda, most of the priorities of government when it comes to funding and policy enforcement are not focused on ensuring a robust healthcare system. In this article, I will argue that Uganda needs to adopt a paradigmatic shift in its practices from biomedical model of healthcare delivery to a psychosocial model that caters to people’s real lived health experiences.

The overarching assumptions here are that a healthy population is a formidable engine to a robust economic growth and that underneath the pervasive failures of Uganda’s healthcare system resides a deliberate effort that ignores the centrality of social determinants of health. The key objective of this discourse therefore is to explicate the myth embedded prevailing biomedical model as overly authoritative, rigid, assumptuous, inefficient, expensive and wasteful of taxpayer’s money.

There is a contradiction between modern healthcare delivery systems and the old approaches in delivering healthcare. Truly, our contemporary society has become more diverse, sophisticated and complex. These attributes reflect that our needs for a healthy society have also become diverse, sophisticated and complex.

To contain these emerging needs, the healthcare system must respond congruently. The Ugandan system has clearly not been able to expand in that direction to accommodate the new realities of our health needs. The healthcare system is entrenched in its biomedical model where health and illnesses are defined by signs and symptoms of diseases or absence thereof.

The problem with biomedical model is that it is so linear and rigid. It does not strive to address underlying causes of ill-health in order to eliminate them. Healthcare professionals will prescribe and dispense anti-malarial drugs without providing a hint as to the means of preventing malaria; orthopedics will cater to broken bones without tackling causes of trauma and assault. This paradigm of care is clearly outdated, costly, ineffective and frustrating to modern society.

In contrast, a more robust and contemporary healthcare system is the psychosocial model, which views individuals as composites of their bigger communities. This model locates the individual within a holistic environmental and recognizes a multiplicity of environmental factors as being primal in determining the health of that individual or the community.

The psychosocial model pursues upstream thinking that permits healthcare providers to work collaboratively with other stakeholders in the community to identify environmental factors that potentiates health including community capacity to maintain their own health.

Road safety, architecture and legislation are some of the areas that the inputs of healthcare professionals become very crucial. Many people have lost lives and limbs in road accidents; many buildings lack safety measures and access to persons with physical challenges and; some legislations are insensitive to social determinants of health. Inter-sectoral collaboration therefore would enable the enactment of healthy public policies effective enough to minimize or eliminate some of these negative impacts on community’s health.

Psychosocial model of care support communities to stay on their feet - it wouldn’t wait until someone is immobilized with symptoms of disease.

One of the failures of our healthcare system is in procurement of tones of drugs and yet most of that money could be diverted to funding community outreach through inter-sectoral collaboration to address causes of ill-health from the onset. This approach would provide evidence based health information to the locals; provide the rural folks with life-skills to avoid illness so they can remain healthy, strong and productive.

In establishing a causal triumph of primary healthcare and community based healthcare, I recommend that Uganda’s education system must embrace a paradigmatic change through curricular overhaul to enhance healthcare professionals’ transition from the overly rigid biomedical model to psychosocial practices of healthcare. Unless we get our priorities and realities harmonized, we shall continue to provide health services that are mutually exclusive and diabolically opposed to the health needs of our society.

The site of dilapidating healthcare facilities; rotten mattresses, congested wards, dehumanized patients and demoralized healthcare workers in the hospitals epitomizes biomedical practices.

END.

It is time for President Museveni to retire!

Most theatrical performers and artists know the value of charming their audiences with quality. They also know when their audiences are no longer captivated by their performances. Usually, the signs such as disengagement become so apparent.

Genuine and talented performers would not accept to depreciate on stage to the point of being heckled out. They know well when to exit from that stage gracefully to leave a legacy and urge for more. Shakespeare once advised performers to know when the curtain should fall. Most importantly, how these performers respond to agitation of their audiences reveals much about their professionalism.

African leaders do not care about the audience or critiques. They continue to perform shamelessly even when their performances hypnotize their audiences. They even flog their audiences to cheer, to endure the agony of their contemptible performances.

I only wish President Yoweri Museveni could know that it’s past his time to leave the stage. His performance from the last twenty six years peaked a decade ago and now is declining at a horrifying speed and it hypnotizes Ugandans. The evidences are all over the walls.

Museveni has developed chronic insensitivity to the common aspirations of Ugandans. Like Alexander the Great, our people will say what they want, and Museveni will do what he wants. Museveni listens only to himself and has mutated, as Nagenda observed, into unbearable autocrat. Museveni now prefers opportunistic economic programs over policies and repression over consensus. The Museveni regime is one that has run out of ideas but has truly become predatory on the state itself for its own survival.

Museveni does not realize that the current economic crisis has been exacerbated by his extremely huge administration and irresponsible spending. The amount of tax payers’ money required to sustain the huge executive and the countless Presidential assistants and advisors, bleeds the economy mercilessly depriving other sectors of resources.

He no longer realizes that investors are increasingly becoming tense due to uncertain political future of Uganda and the shaky economic environment characterized by depreciating currency and corruption.

Certainly, donors have long lost trust in the regime’s veracity with public funds. What remains is a caricature of efforts assembled by donors to maintain a flimsy working relationship with the hope that the money channelled through the regime will reach the common man.

Museveni by all means, is not one who cherishes democracy. If anyone expects him to reform the current electoral commission, then they are wasting time. The real problem is that members in the opposition have failed to trust each other and to unite against this regime.

A lot of people may think that NRM is very strong politically. The grassroots strength of the NRM is questionable as it pries on uncritical masses. Its dependency on the personalization of the army lies on tenure of President Museveni. I contend that if the army where to be purged from participating in coercive politics; and the Police or any other armed groups where to be restrained within reasonable boundaries, the NRM regime would not win election despite their bribery.

The revelation of both NRM insiders, John Nagenda, a long time NRM spin doctor and Hon Capt Mike Mukula, the NRM V/C from Eastern Uganda, are a telling tales of the discontent that lurches beneath the ethnic hegemony that the NRM is. A lot of people feel that they have been excluded from the state processes. Majority of Ugandans have been deprived of their citizenship rights.

What is also true is that only the Musevenis feel that they are the bona fide citizens of Uganda and their personal, lavish lifestyle in the face of a crumbling economy is justified. These are disillusioned lot who have used the military to personalize Uganda, its natural resources and economic structures. You can tell how real Ugandans are humiliated from their market places and chased down the streets where they eke a living or those who feed on animal skins.

 I contend that it is time for President Museveni to leave now!

END! 

NRM regime makes us look hateful!

This posting is in response to former Ethics and Integrity Minister in the NRM regime. He lost his re-election bid at the Party's primary election level and has since become a director of some elusive institution. Recently, he wrote an article in the Daily Monitor ridiculing Ugandans that we seem to hate ourselves and our country. The article link can be found here: 
http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/Commentary/-/689364/1227976/-/12s0twyz/-/index.html

Dear,

Dr. Nsaba Buturo, you nag my mind and you incessantly surprise me when you ridicule and mock Ugandans for hating ourselves. I wonder where you draw your moral authority to judge us from. But given your high moral aptitude, I would say that it is people like you who make us appear as though we hate ourselves. Look at how you have simply lost touch with everyday daunting realities of Ugandans in their pursuit of fundamentals of life.

Dr. Nsaba, Ugandans do not hate themselves. Ugandans are absolved in self-reflection. They are looking back at the deceit and false promises given to them by NRM in 1986. They cannot find a balance sheet and they feel deep sense of loss of 25 years. They now recognize that their country has been usurped and transformed in an imperial manner to serve some alien interests.

How can you judge us because our society has suffered underdevelopment and claim that we hate ourselves for it without taking blame? When I look at each and every eye of a young Ugandan today, I see traces of frustration, hopelessness, anger and deeply seated regret for a future squandered.  And the older Ugandans feel alike!

We have the poorest education delivered in heist for political purposes. Our graduates are literally not ready for job market and yet they continue to face discrimination from government, in private sector and alienation from society. Our youths, facing one of the largest unemployment rates in the region, at 60% are stared in the face with stark reality of corruption, favouritism and nepotism. They are told that they do not qualify for tax holidays like your regime’s so-called investors; they are deprived Start-up loans because they lack political patronage and they are harassed out of business with ridiculous taxes, making them broke and worthless. It is such feelings that generate the apathy. You think we hate ourselves!

Dr. Nsaba, a country where corruption is state inspired is nothing to be proud of. None of the institutions in Uganda functions well. There is public outcry each and every day on things gone berserk, from hospitals to social welfare.

You were a Minister of Ethic and Integrity for two decades. You conspired with the imperialists to sideline and malign well intentioned Ugandans from the state process. CHOGM money was stolen from under your nose; GAVI money and Global Fund money, intended for our friends, relatives and fellow citizens who endure the scathing humiliation of HIV/AIDS were stolen and abused. What was the ministry of integrity and ethics doing to make us proud? A country where it’s President announces that it is full of thieves, how can I be proud of it?

Dr. Nsaba, how can I be content with a country where elections are regularly stolen with impunity; where opposition leaders and members of civil society are disrespected and assaulted in most heinous of manners and; where civil liberties are trampled upon without shame!

Every institution and arm of government is corrupt: the Police, judiciary, Parliament and worse still a predatory executive. I just want to find one thing which should make me love Uganda and I will tell you in a minute.

I would do us so much injustice if I failed to note that in Uganda of the twenty second century, we still dole out natural vegetation for sugar investment; that our electricity companies generate more darkness than light; that our roads produce more mental unease than stress and that the child and maternal death rates continue to threaten our very sense of humanity.

In Uganda, the President buys himself luxurious jets and military hardware and donates US $300000 to neighbouring country which is richer and more organized and yet it cannot feed victims of landslide or those children who are feeding on cattle skin with tap roots of any wild trees out there.

But I have hopes. I see it in the eyes of the children who have shown resiliency to survive through the hardships and mockery of your impervious regime. I see in them, a bright prospect and abundant strength upon which a new future shall be founded. I see in those eyes, a message that they deserve to belong, respect, equity, social justice and above all a free and fair society where each one of them shall thrive without prejudice. A place that loves them with that motherly love so they can love her back!

END.