Improving Teacher's Conditions shouldn't be a personal favor from Mr. Museveni

TEACHERS' PAY

The imagination that teachers can earn decent salaries, live a comfortable life; drive a car, wear new clean clothing and shoes, build a house, or have properly fed children, continues to elude malicious minds. The teaching profession has been consigned to a very sorry place in society. This is unfortunate. As such, when Dr Kiiza Besigye proposed to pay primary teachers at least 650,000/= and their secondary counterparts at least 1 million Shs, many naysayers startled and heckled.

The plight of teachers in this country is a thorny subject, but the real fight to overhaul the humiliating conditions of the teachers, is one which has to be fought in the mind, first, and then on paper. It is a mental imagery thing, rather than affordability.

A robust education sector is a critical driver of any economy. The fast developing countries have discovered that a strong, well incentivized and competent teaching workforce, has the capacity to train the mind of visionary, innovative, and productive citizens. They have long invested in their teachers – in teachers' education and remuneration.

The real problems with the teachers of Uganda is no different than that of Police or Prison Warders. These groups have been socialized to the lower echelon of society and disadvantaged by their numbers, despite overwhelming workload and strenuous work conditions.

While Teaching is a noble profession, with specific body of knowledge and recognized Teachers' Colleges, the profession has continued to attract people of low school grades, and from impoverished backgrounds. In fact, lower school teaching, like Police and Prison services, are traditional reserves for unfortunate students whose prevailing circumstances prevented them from passing national exams or pursuing higher education.

One of the challenges is that only in developing countries like Uganda, do you find such a critical sector of the economy being driven by lowly educated and poorly paid workforce. This is the area where Dr. Kiiza Besigye has proposed an agenda to overhaul the conditions; to provide a clear path for professional development, from lowest possible education, to university degree and where possible, ensure that the minimum qualification for a grade teacher is at least a university degree; and to substantially reduce the teacher to student ratio to allow for effective classroom engagement. The KB campaign also proposes professionalizing the Police and Prisons Forces by establishing a Police and Prisons Foundation Colleges where officers have the opportunity for professional development pathways. These proposed changes will totally overhaul and depoliticize the civil workforce, transforming them into the honorable professions that they once were.

There is a problem with the current highly politicized civil workforce. Their problem resides within their Union leadership, which is also embedded within the ruling system. As such, every genuine efforts by teachers to demand for a change in their work and living conditions gets subverted from within, by political pandering.

As such, the current Uganda National Association of Teachers' Union (UNATU) leadership is defective in as far as making UNATU an appendage of NRM Party. First, they have tended to demand for improved conditions from the person of the President, not from government. This is a fundamental mistake that we have seen in their recent demand that teachers would not vote for Mr. Museveni if their demands were not met (DM: Nov 29, 2015). Improving Teachers' conditions shouldn't be a personal favor from Mr. Museveni. Since 2012, the government pledged to increase teacher's lowest pay to Shs 500,000 per month. Several budgets have passed without delivering this promise.

Further, pay is just one important condition that defines the teaching profession. The teaching environment and the tools to teach are equally as important. There is urgent need for system overhaul in the education sector – building new houses for teachers, ensuring that their children obtain free education, and allowing teachers to upgrade academically and to participate in research.

In these regards, I find that WesigeBesigye Campaign offers the best possible future for the overhaul of the education sector at institutional level, not as a personal gift. There are many experts that agree with his proposal as a practical, responsible and realistic public spending.

End.

Defiance and non-compliance inevitable in Uganda's election

Defiance, Non-compliance

The "defiance, non-compliant" campaign is a unique and effective approach – something very original for an electoral environment that is naturally skewed to favor the incumbent. The FDC team have exemplified a unique understanding of the challenges in uprooting an established repressive system supplanted for nearly 30 years. It is the price of an enduring experience of self-sacrifice from a true freedom fighter, Rtd. Col. Dr Kiiza Besigye, and an excellent Party leadership behind him.

The main agenda of the Team WesigeBesigye2016 is to focus on the rural voter - the peasants. In most of the rallies, we see a lot of people trekking from their rural communities to towns to catch a glimpse of the contestants. We even see bus loads and trucks ferrying paid NRM audience to Mr. Museveni's rallies. This time, KB has taken the campaigns to the rural communities where voters are. 

The second, and most interesting, is clarity of the defiance, non-compliance agenda framing. The defiant travel through nearly impassable roads are endearing KB to his voters. The Team KB's travelling to remote countryside has expose the immense neglect and under-development in these communities. KB has been speaking directly to the masses about vote theft and how to protect their votes. 

The third feature of Team WesigeBesigye2016 campaign is the steadfastness of the defiance. Outlining the fact that the Kiggundu-led Electoral Commission is unable to organize a free and fair elections. This message is resonating. Given the P10 innovation, voters are getting prepared to protect the ballot boxes to ensure that there is no characteristic stuffing of pre-ticked votes, and that the integrity of the ballot boxes are not compromised before any voting begins anywhere in Uganda as seen in NRM Primaries.

The prospects for change in 2016 is beckoning. It must come to pass, and Ugandans should brave themselves to ensure that a peaceful transfer of power is made possible. 

There are people who swear that such a moment of national joy will never come in 2016. Given the unfair electoral environment, it is normal to be pessimistic. 

However, the minimum expectation of the Kiggundu-led Commission, is to ensure that they honor the constitutional provision that power belongs to the people, and that people are free to exercise their power as they so wish. Any tinkering with the exercise of this power, could potentially destabilize this nation.

Therefore, non-compliance is justified in this elections to encourage voters' vigilance. The messages should target the Judiciary as well. In its previous rulings of 2001 and 2006, the Judges confirmed that EC elections were fraudulent. However, they were pressure by the tyrant to rule that voting irregularities were not significant in determining the overall outcome.  That oxymoron effectively rubber stamped an illegitimate regime and legitimized electoral frauds in Uganda.

It is only dishonest for the judicial system to allow injustice and inequities to govern this beautiful nation. The totality of electoral outcomes should not only be determined by what happens at the ballot and its outcome. The bigger picture should consider preceding circumstances and the environment that permits or limits equal participation.

In a country where Police, the Military and all security agencies are partisan, and where the Police recruits millions of "crime preventers" for the incumbent, a red flag should be flying high. Further, with so much incumbency privileges that allows the sitting President to run government, use state privileges and resources as he pleases, it is an ingenius device to claim that the EC can create a level playing field. Of course, such, is the defect in the 1995 Constitution. However, the Supreme Court should provide a remedial directive on such entrenched inequities. There is too much power vested in the Presidency. 

Therefore, contesting within the Kiggundu's Rules of Injustice disenfranchises any participant. In fact, it is almost natural, that the moment a candidate complies with the Kiggundu's Rules, they become irrelevant.

END

Campaigns exposes under-development in NRM Western Uganda strongholds

UNDER-DEVELOPMENT

Until the Elect-Besigye Campaign team got stuck in impassable mud roads in Kisoro, very few of us expected such under-development in this region. In fact, the most surprising, was the sight of broken bridges in Ruhama and the school children dancing bear feet, wearing rag-tag uniforms in youtube clips. I asked myself, what happened to all these NRM leaders who claim that they are God-sent to salvage the people from poverty, ill-health and inadequate resources? If the startling pictures of impoverished people in this region is not testimony enough to the inadequacy of this regime, what else do we need to convince our people that change is inevitable, now?

I have held on to a personal prejudice that areas that have traditionally embraced the NRM and voted for it, 89% and over, are also the areas that suffer the most in under development. While few individual from these areas have benefited from the perks of political patronage, isolated areas like Kisoro suffers silently.

Take for instance Busoga, Bunyoro, Tooro and Kigezi as a whole. These areas are very loyal to the NRM and have always voted overwhelmingly for the regime. While a lot of individuals from here have enjoyed disproportionate access to state resources; jobs and privileges, the regions stagnated in development far behind those areas that do not rely on this government.

The number of people from Kigezi and Ankole who are in lucrative and influential public positions; in the civil service – Police, Army, Banks, Education and all sectors of society, supersedes those from any other regions combined. Kisoro's under-development clearly attests that personal gains have not been translated into public gains. This reaffirms the premise of Dr Kiiza Besigye's argument that the NRM has stolen from the public and lavished self-seeking individuals who are investing in Kampala, or stashing money in foreign accounts. The ordinary village folk has remained unattended to, and rural infrastructure have decayed.

The contradictions in this government is what inspires corruption. People are fleeing away from villages, selling their lands to afford boda-boda and other trades because agro-based production, the back-bone of our economy, is no longer lucrative and attractive. Most of the resources have been siphoned to cater for an extremely high cost of public administration and defense of the status quo. Unfortunately, the President believes that he can have himself a private jet, helicopter, fleet of expensive automobiles to facilitate a King's life, while the people he leads can wallop in dehumanizing poverty.

Numerous poverty alleviation programs have been hatched from 2001 to this date. Those programs have proven incompatible with the zeal of the people. These programs come fully charged with politics. Recipients must belong to, or appear to support the person of President Museveni before s/he can access loans or whatever seeds and cows that the government is vending.

At the end of it all, poverty has become endemic and the government is now targeting the poor, not poverty, or the underlying historical and social inequities that generate poverty and sustains it. People are increasingly realizing that the Museveni government has gone too far in reversing the Robinhood heroism that taught us that it is ethical to rob from the rich and give to the poor. The NRM mercilessly robs from the poor, lavishes rich individuals, and subdues its poor with Mambas.

The real problem with Ugandans is apathy - low threshold for outrage, and no imagination for a real peaceful change of government. It is embedded in the tumultuous history of this country that Mr. Museveni himself exploits. Otherwise, the scary underdevelopment all over the country, given the 30 uninterrupted years of NRM rule, could have provided sufficient ground for passing a harsh judgement on it, at the 2016 elections. In the pursuit of decorum, Museveni himself is the active ingredient of instability. People should not fear change. Living in Kisoro defeats any logic of sustaining Museveni in power.

END