The militarized Uganda Police is Too Angry!

Civil Force

I have seen the evolution of the Uganda Police since the President started appointing military generals to transform it. A major shakeup of the Police took place under the Maj. General Katumba Wamala. The President had always judged the police by the way they voted and dismissed the civil force as remnants of the Obote era. Maj General Kale Kayihura has overly militarized the Police and made them too angry uncivil and uncouth!

I recall quite well that by the time NRM came to power, the Uganda Police was already a wreck. Their living conditions were no better than broken debris of colonial style makeshifts. In every Police barracks one goes, from Naguru, Nsambya and wherever Police Barracks existed, the diminutive existence of this group was stellar in its overall presentation. An ordinary Policeman lived alone in hot and inhuman Unipots if he were lucky. Most of them shared small houses with large families. One constant feature of any Police barracks was bustling sewerage system that snaked through the terrible road conditions. Overcrowding and congestion were commonplace.

Civil servants in Uganda are quite admirable groups when it comes to enduring the greed of the political class. While the Police and teachers have endured the most humiliation in our society, their commitment and zeal to execute their duties remained impeccable and incorruptible. They were on their duty stations on time even when their salaries always came in arrears, many months late. They forfeited civilian lifestyle that they could not afford and remained neatly tucked in their regimented lives of rations.

I recall the many children from Police barracks that we attended schools in Naguru with. Even when they could not afford the luxuries that other kids had, such as having pocket change to buy pancakes and so forth, they soldiered on through the day undisturbed. Often they were the nicest kids, quite humble, sociable and caring. They never spoke much about their own imaginations in public for fear of being ridiculed by society and yet, inside, they had their separate dreams.

The struggles of regular Policeman, to a greater extent, were reflected on the humble faces of their children. But the disparities that existed between the regular constables, the traffic offers (most corrupted) and the officers were such a sharp contrast. Even then, any son of a Police officer would never be seen in public to show off or brag about comfort of life or might of the father as we see nowadays.

Definitely, the disciplined and professional Police of the 80s and 90s are nonexistent now. What we have now are a bunch of angry dastardly machines dressed up in Police Uniforms. The real professional police which was a civil force has been inadvertently replaced by military men who are loaded with and aligned to the NRM’s ideology or corruption and repression.

Every time I see the pictures of the Police officers in action; either detaining or violating the rights of opposition leaders, my faith in them sinks. Our generation were taught that the primary duties of the Police are to keep law and order. The Kayihura Police is just too angry to do any of those civil duties. Instead, they cause civil unrest and participate shamelessly in violating fundamental human liberties for which the force should actually be safeguarding.

I have never seen any angry Police Commanders like the ones I see in the media in action in Kasangati and Gayaza. I have advised my friends not to ever frequent this side of Kampala because of these angry Policemen who appear as if they were perennially constipated. This is largely due to the experiences of Col Besigye when the police littered his farm with faeces after feeding on beans and posho.

It is a pity indeed that the Uganda Police has crafted an image as a toolkit for repression of the masses. This is very bad for our infantile democracy and more so for economic development because the Police is supposed to be impartial force if they are to protect all Ugandans and their properties irrespective of their political or ideological differences.

It is even strange how the Police of nowadays are prophetic, in that they foresee intent before the act. The militarized Uganda Police is just too angry a force and it must be revitalized, counselled and rehabilitated henceforth to civility!!

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NRM has no legitimacy in the fight against corruption

In this article I contend that any fight against corruption in Uganda cannot be successful unless we redefined the social contract between state actors and the masses by changing the NRM regime which lacks the legitimacy in fighting corruption. Corruption has increasingly redefined human relations thereby undermining the very tenets upon which a credible authority is established in society like Uganda.

Social contracts exists when society when morality exists in politics. When politics is deprived of the ingredient of morality, what we see is havoc because by nature man is an insatiable beast. Political theorists will concur that Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have given this concept sufficient exposition and defense by emphasizing that a person’s moral and political obligations must be dependent on the social contract between them and the society they live in.

The postmodern phislosopher John Rawl took a liking for Emmanuel Kant’s theory known as “Kantianism” and gave it a modern revamp in his 1972 “The theory of Justice” by arguing that each one of us (man) has the capacity to reason from a universal point of view, which in turn means that we have the particular moral capacity of judging principles from an impartial standpoint. In other words, Rawl argues that our moral and political points of views are mostly attained via impartiality.

The above texts help to illuminate a number of disparities in our fights against corruption. First, that either the social contract that exists between public figures that plunder our resources lacks moral component. Second, that society largely condones and is tolerant to corruptions. Third, that we exist in a largely remote society where we are unconscious of the numerous shapes and forms associated with corruption and how it impacts on our very being as society. Finally, that justice could never be exacted on the corrupt on behalf of society because we lack impartial authority to do that!

Our infantile democracy is always tainted with fraud and malpractices such as voter bribery. When we cheat in election, we basically manufacture consent from the masses through fraudulent means, including coercion. This greatly undermines the power of the people in constituting credible government. Our election processes are therefore illegitimate and immoral in that sense and only helps propel individual greed above common good. This makes the fight against corruption a difficult task because the product of an immoral or illegal transaction breeds equally illegal product - corruption.

The implication is that because most of those elected are guilty of partaking in an immoral process to attaining political power, they cannot be impartial to acts of corruption. Thus, they lack the political will and the fundamentals – the morals to decisively fight against corruption, thus the gerrymandering in Parliament and within the executives including IGG institution.

Whether our society tolerates corruption and corrupt tendencies, we can only see this in the way corruption and influence peddling has been handled in Uganda. The recent case of CHOGM involving the former Vice President, Gilbert Bukenya only speaks for itself. The many scandals associated with current Prime Minister, Rt. Hon J.P. Amama Mbabazi is another. The revelations by three ministers and two statehouse employees that the President authorized illegal payments to businessman Bassajjabalaba are another. But the most glaring is the subsequent denial of oversight involving the Bassajjabalaba scandalous payment by the President himself. Who is committing perjury?

There is a trail and track of corruption that link each and every NRM leaders inextricably. In the crime involving huge illegal money, sex and drugs, just follow the money trail and you will catch a Whiteman at the end. In Uganda, it is true; everyone in politics is corrupt, either by association, omission or commission.

One only needed to recognize this when Prime Minister succinctly stated that any fight against corruption that targets him, is intended to overthrow Museveni. Such statements help buttress the corrupt in power, legitimize and normalize the vice and make Museveni loyalists, prime agents of corruption.

Our society has long accepted that corruption was a quicker way of accumulating wealth since Ugandan assets were disposed off fraudulently in the 90s.

Finally, the failure in the fight against corruption is visible when people accused of corruption are carried shoulder high by the taxpayers who have been fleeced. It is even branded as state function when corrupt people are mandated through the ballot to continue in their plunder of the economy unabated!

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