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
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