Explaining "defiance, noncompliance" to Eng. Kiggundu

DEFIANCE NONCOMPLIANCE

Since the last week, the Chairman of Electoral Commission, Eng Badru Kiggundu appears more distraught than stressed.  His biased utterances show that Eng. Kiggundu has lost his sense of fairness and he should step aside.

The role of the Chairman of an Election Commission is that of arbitration. Refereeing. And, like most referees, he should exercise a high degree of impartiality. This, precisely, is what the defiance, noncompliance campaign demands – a basic expectation of an Electoral Commission to conduct a free and fair elections.

This basic principle appears to elude Kiggundu and his EC. Mr. Kiggundu has increasingly become intolerant and irritable to the point that he can no longer hide his contempt for Dr Besigy. The message of “defiance, noncompliance” appears to have cornered the EC that they see limited opportunity for rigging elections.

For that, Eng. Kiggundu has clearly lost his cool. The puzzle that is unsettling him the most, apparently, is how to contain Dr Kiiza Besigye, in case the EC has to announce that he lost, come February 18, 2015.

I think it is important to explain to Eng. Kiggundu what “defiance, noncompliance” means. Dr. Besigye has from inception claimed that the Electoral Commission is biased and is incapable of organizing a free and fair elections. In the build up to the Citizens’ EC Reform proposal that the government discounted, it was made clear that Eng. Kiggundu’s EC is an accomplice in the vote rigging that has denied Dr Kiiza Besigye victory since 2001.

It is against such a background that political players had hoped the government would want to build consensus by adopting some of the proposed amendments to the EC statute and other enabling laws. The government acted belligerent and noncompliant, by rejecting all the issues raised by the Citizen’s Consultation Process. In the minimum, government simply added a word “Independent” to the Electoral Commission.

In doing so, the government strengthened its grip on EC by excluding members of the Opposition and civil society from contributing to it composition and transparency mechanisms. In essence, it it became clear that the incumbent had no intentions to compete favourably for the 2016 elections.

The issue with Kiggundu’s Electoral Commission remained unresolved. This calls for defiance and noncompliance to those unjust conditions. It is about resisting any prospect of the Commission participating, as usual, in skewing the electoral process towards the incumbent.

So far, all signs allude to the fact that Eng. Kiggundu is lost in words, virtues and deeds. First, he admitted that there is no way the EC can be independent, given that they get their funding from the Executive. Every sensible Ugandan knows that the EC is funded from the National Treasury!

Second, by addressing his discontent with Dr Kiiza Besigye in public, and to transgress into attacking the family of Dr. Kiiza, Eng. Kiggundu showed his deeply seated derisions, and prejudice towards this candidate.

The EC has power and resources at his disposal to call to order, any Candidate who is not playing by the rules. The obvious first line of action is to write directly to the candidate, as he did with Mukono MP, Hon, Nambooze ( Ref: LEG 75/79/01 dated December 15, 2015 letter in official EC headed letter, but enclosed in NRM Secretariat envelop). Second, is to invite the Candidate with his agents for a one-on-one meeting in regards to the alleged transgression(s). He could defer to Police in events that a Candidate broke the law, or conducted himself in manners that are contemptuous of public order.

In sharp contrast, Mr. Kiggundu has not condemned NRM for interfering repeatedly, with Go-Forward rallies. He is watching gleefully as the Go-Forward campaign agents are being kidnapped by the Police.

Dr. Kiiza Besigye has been transparent enough to warn that it is these deliberate acts of omission and commission to create unfair and unfree elections that he will defy and not comply with. There is nothing illegal about that.

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How the Musevenists are holding Museveni hostage

POLITICAL HOSTAGE

The post NRM Primaries has revealed a lot more about behind the scene struggles that we should analyze. It is increasingly clear that Mr. Museveni is indeed a hostage of a group of exploiters and self-seekers who are accustomed to state patronage, corruption, and are equitable to the Latin America’s fish – Piranhas/Caribes.

To shed light into this matter, most of the Ministers and vocal NRM leaning Legislators who lost during the NRM Primaries, have all decided to contest as Independents. There are seven Ministers and several MPs. This means that this group does not believe in the internal democracy within their own Party.

In 2011, many of the so-called Independents made it through the universal adult suffrage. Because of their numerical strength, the NRM managed to sign a memorandum of understanding with these group to support NRM positions in Parliament. For the most part of the last Parliament, the Independents fused with their NRM counterparts and voted yellow, to enjoy all privileges and perks of loyalty.

This arrangement is the key motivator for the unrelenting rise of independents. The second motivator is the sense of entitlement. Since this group are accustomed to sitting on the high table, they cannot imagine life outside the shades of the state with all the spoils from the public purse.

To understand fully how President Museveni is a hostage to these covetous interests, one needs to return to that day at Kyankwanzi, when Hon Anite knelt before the President, to beg him to run as a sole candidate. Why sole candidate given that the President has previously defeated his competitors such as Hon Okot Ogong and others?

Pundits would say that the rush for ring fencing the NRM flag bearer position, was for fear that the Rt Hon Amama Mbabazi would subject the Party Chairman to a fierce contests that would expose the Party and divide it. The expulsion of JPAM from the Party did that anyway. However, what appears to be a more valid explanation for the sole candidature move is divide within the NRM Party. 

There are several power bases – Those allied to Salim Saleh tend to have a fusion between war veterans and their dependents; those allied to Hon. Mbabazi and NRM Secretariats, and the Musevenists, who are allied directly to the President and his family members. The latter group runs Statehouse, are in Brig Muhoozi’s elite forces and the ones who man statehouse scholarships and welfare services. This is also the most powerful, vicious, corrupt, and sectarian group with privileges and quick access to the President.

In NRM, everyone wants to ally with, and be a Musevenists. When you visit rural Uganda, you will find many local NRM mobilizers claiming that they work for Statehouse, even when they are just friendly to an RDC.

Anite’s knee bent position therefore was symbolic of the Musevenists'  double checkmate - against JPAM and to hold the President hostage. It is like in one of those war stories where severely injured war leaders race to hoist the flag before an emperor, when in retreat from defeat. Feeling threatened by the Pro-JPAM group, the Musevenists decided that the most effective way to capitulate the advancing JPAM influence, is by radically compelling the President to contest, and to ring fence the position of both Party Chairman and Presidential flag bearer, quickly. That move was effective, and the rest is history.

However, JPAM did not lie down or lay down his weapons. It is true that JPAM had massively mobilized the grassroot NRM structures to galvanize his own ascension to power. In the countryside, there was a perception among NRM mobilizers that President Museveni had agreed to hand over power to JPAM. They argued that the reluctance of the President to declare his intentions to run, and in allowing JPAM to wield so much power, as both NRM Secretary General and Prime Minister.

The Musevenists are now holding the President hostage. Like the Piranhas, known for their sharp teeth, powerful jaws, and voracious appetite for "meat". The Musevenists are as dangerous.

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Corruption in Uganda is a moral and a political problem

CORRUPTION REVISITED

The subject of pervasive corruption in Uganda accentuates a deeply seated sense of pessimism, followed by powerlessness in its victims, which leads to an internalized and normalized justification of it. Corruption, primarily perpetuates itself through a degenerative morality/ethics, feeds the politics of lumpen proletariat, and, in my view, it is the manifestation of the body politics of violence against societal integrity.

Corruption in Uganda has acquired a unique and devastating characteristic that needs proper scrutiny. The arguments in Moses Khisa’s “Is Corruption a Moral or Political Problem?” (The Observer, Dec 3, 2015), enticed me to write this piece.

The uniqueness of Uganda’s corruption is that, it has acquired a sustainable life of its own and is now a regenerative system, courted and used officially as a political tool to sustain this government, and a method through which asymmetry in government obtains. However, the bigger picture of corruption is that it is largely inspired by the State functionaries as an exercise of structural violence. Through rampant corruption, the system violently assaults our moral fabrics, thereby, setting ground for heinous crimes against the State and all its institutions.

Ugandan is overwhelmed by corruption in ways that shocks even Lucifer, himself. Nothing in this country goes on without bribe seeking or expectation of it. No public or private institution is immune of this vice. Corruption is the HIV of our societal institutions, and its endemic malfunctions, are its AIDS.

The level of bribe seeking has become so commonplace that every service provider appears ordained with natural sense of deficits to justify the act. Every moment, from the simple act of chivalry, bribe and kickbacks are expected. For that, the environment for syndicated corruption, a version of organized violent crime, has festered. Here, everyone is connected on the corruption lifeline, from the President, Minister, the Judges, Law enforcement, to the last person who supervises ghost employees, signs for their salaries and shares such illicit proceeds with their bosses above.

The argument that bribe seeking is a form of indirect taxation, exemplifies a significant loophole in government tax regime. Here, again, we see the decay in moral principles, and inability to apply an equitable tax regime. The rich and well connected people are allowed to transact business in this country without paying taxes. 

The so-called foreign investors are lavished with tax holidays with guarantees to repatriate profits tax-free, at the expense of the local investors.  In fact, the entire economic structure of Uganda is hostile, and excluding of local investments. It is such structured inequities that replenishes the bloodlines of corruption and augments the culture of bribe seeking and taking cuts. A Dr. Carl Stauffer observed that corruption feeds off of power asymmetry and thereby inadvertently nurtures and legitimates hierarchy, patrimony and dependency.

The brand of Uganda’s corruption, is the manifestation of non-combat violence waged by the NRM against the moral fabrics of society. The NRM’s core ideology is rooted in the justification of violence as a means of achieving social transformation. More-so, the people who loot this country are well protected. They have their sons, daughters and relatives in high places in the security agencies and in key nodes, where money and power changes hands.

I was sincerely disturbed by the arrogance and violence imbued in the testimonies during proceedings at the Justice Catherine Bamugemereire’s Commission that investigated the Uganda National Roads Authority. Suspects spoke as if they had the right to have acted unprofessionally to siphon funds and build substandard roads. To them, such diversions bore no imminent sense of criminality. Corruption has already devoured the moral and conscience of our society. You would expect the President to have acted expeditiously on the report. Only to note that his hands are tied because the tale of this corruption has a complicated trail and webs that spares no one. Everyone is culpable and we are left without any moral authority to confront it. The perils of corruption makes it equally a political issue.

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Go-Forward’s Sub-County model of development deserves our attention.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

When I read the Go Forward Manifesto, I was struck hard by the central piece of their development proposal called Advanced Sub-County Model of Development (pg23). This model deserves our attention as voters as it will remove the clutter in our development planning. The proposal potentiates a standardized, equity-based development plan.

The ingredient which lacks in the Uganda 2040 vision is a standardization and equity-based approach. As such, it is littered with micro-management style, and a lot of trial and error, where development is concentrated at national level, politicized, personalized and patronized by the President - leaving nothing concrete for the rural folks and those with divergent beliefs.

The Advanced Sub-County Model of Development has hit on a crucial development design, which should attract social transformational debate in the 2016 elections. The core issues in this proposal is the de-politicization, decentralization and standardization of equitable development.

A 2014 World Bank Reports indicated that 84.23% of our people are rural based in subsistence livelihoods. Yet, 80% of quality education opportunities and healthcare services are concentrated in urban centres where less than 20% of our population resides.

The Sub-County Model allows us to scrutinize and correct that unnatural order of inequities.

First, the JPAM manifesto proposes a formula upon which an equitable development can be achieved horizontally - at sub-county levels – by transforming the sub-county into an economic development unit; and, vertically, by claiming resources that are spent paying for the cost of patronage at the national level.

This, so far, is the best proposal and a winning formula for revitalization of rural economies. A focus on standardized self-sustaining sub-counties is a model where equitable investment in social services - transportation, farmer's cooperatives with bank/loan services, healthcare, education, recreation, green energy, sustainable environment projects, value adding industries, and markets, etc., can realistically get established closer to the people.

This model means that no matter where you are, you will have the same opportunities and services in your community - built and beautified, equipped and serviced, as well as replenished, with the same intensity, frequency and quality. This is sustainable, accountable, and equitable development.

The format of governance over politicizes the county and neglects the Sub-county, thereby disabling rural productive. As a result, most of the districts are unable to raise taxes and develop a tax base sufficient to fund a district’s annual budget. There is great opportunity to unlock rural potential by decentralizing economic development to sub-county levels and guarding it against partisan politics.

When you travel to developed countries, we see standardization of developments. Roads are designed, structured and developed in the same manner; streets sizes and designs, sign posts all standardized to your marvel. Housing, water, sewerage systems, public transportation, public libraries, recreation centres, and other social services are literally structured the same, in orderly manner in development units called Boroughs, or special Wards in Japan known as Tokubetsu ku.

I have taken the liberty to study the NRM Manifesto. In it, I found nothing captivating and appealing to common sense. In fact, one can correctly assert that it is a compendium of bravado. It does not offer a renewed hope that anything will be done differently than we already know.

In my consultation with the WesigeBesigye Campaign, there is a general consensus on egalitarianism – striving to point out that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or social status, and therefore, the role of government is to offer services equitably to stimulate the unleashing of innovation and production. Dr Kiiza Besigye himself has been a consisted advocate of responsible public spending, smaller size of government, reduced costs in public administration, and a deliberate investment in critical areas of production, such as in education, agriculture, healthcare, green energy, electricity, social justice, and so forth. These are areas that I find a striking momentum for real social transformation.

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