Occupy Wall Street: Neo-Liberalism has failed us

GLOBAL ECONOMICS

I am not a scholar of economics. I am, however, a recurrent recipient of bad global economic policies and one staunch opponent of neo-liberal ideologies which I think of as the greatest contradiction and blatant lies being sold to the poor peoples.

Until the insurrection of the masses in New York on September 17^th, 2011 with the now famed “Occupy Wall Street” led by Canadian activists, Adbusters, America, which has been economically robust, (so they made us to believe) has been portrayed as one of the victims of neo-liberal ideals.

America has been mortgaged to China, with Chinese debts ranging in multiple zero figures. According to the United States Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Public Debt (September 2011), the US foreign debt is $14.94 trillion with the bulk of it coming from China and Oil producing countries.

When the liberalization of the economy became a buzz word in the 90s, the US shamelessly benefitted from the stay of market protectionism and high tariffs for non-western products, most annoyingly, is the protection over Agricultural products that were restricted from accessing American domestic markets.

Because other countries opened up their markets, the allure of cheap labor exploits and good government incentives (lower taxes, state protection and other benefits) attracted a lot of American companies, most of which had benefitted enormously from the Bush era tax cuts, to developing countries. Most of these jobs left US for India, China, Vietnam and Latin America where the investors could procure cheap labour for maximization of their profits.

The problem is that, the countries where these jobs relocated were not benefitting either because the investors appropriated their profits and stashed the money away in foreign banks, in Switzerland or returned to real estate businesses back home. Americans at home lost their industrial job opportunities as jobs were being outsourced overseas or new and challenging opportunities were emmerging.

In essence, neo-liberalism has greatly altered global and regional wealth distribution. It was able to take away jobs from America, and this led to numerous foreclosures due to joblessness for home owners. Now, in America, you are either poor or not and this is because the middle class is shrinking and the super rich are making some frivolous annual profits unimaginable that they do not want to share through taxation.

The current Occupy Wall Street is a struggle I associate with as a form of social justice. Although the idea was wishy-washy initially, their message has now taken shape and proper form, in that it now represents the people’s resolution to demand for fair wealth sharing at a global scale.

The real enemy of the people are the Republicans in the US and ultra Conservative demagogues world-over. The American Republicans despise the poor and believe that the rich should not be taxed and that poor people should not be entitled to universal healthcare or education and should be taxed at any point of contact with government. They prefer to levy heavy taxes on the middle class and low income earners, and wish the destitute, homeless and vulnerable to vanish quick from the surface of the earth altogether.

Republicans believe that the rich should be given tax breaks so they can create jobs for the working class. The problem is, the profits made out of exploiting the working class is protected against any significant taxation. So when President Obama demanded that the rich be taxed more, the Republicans Paul Ryan, the chairman of budget committee and Sen. Mitch McConell, the Senate Republican leader, accused President Obama of initiating a class-war.

Diversionary as that is, Warren Buffet, a Billionaire businessman did attest to the fact that he pays peanuts and his fellow billionaires have paid peanuts in taxes in comparison to what the middle class guys pay. He even boldly asked that the taxe system be revised upward on the rich in the United States. This testimony is the bedrock of the current Occupy Wall Street that I am proudly associating myself with.

I believe that the global inequities in wealth distribution are a threat to the world’s population health. In 2012, the earth will host 7 billion people, majority live in developing countries where poverty is very prevalent. Unless the global wealth, which is accumulated in the Western Hemisphere, gets redistributed, the ecosystems will barely sustain this population. The poor will turn to exploiting the environment to eke for a living and the rich will continue to exploit the poor. The endgame is obvious - the conditions that have sustained depravity and vulnerability will thrive unabated.

Typical Republican argument would support the myth that the Earth’s ability to support a population is contingent upon those factors in society which facilitates “survival for the fittest”. This means that those who fail to adapt to the competitive world should quickly phase out to leave space for those who are better adapted.

END.

Uganda: The fight against Corruption is fight against NRM and Museveni Inc.

Corruption 

I contend that a genuine fight against corruption in Uganda is a fight against the NRM and President Museveni. This fight is complicated and is comparable to the global fight against international drug and human traffickers. Quite a complex feat interlaced, driven and sustained by high level political corruption within the party because the NRM Party has become synonymous with and prime agent of corruption.

Underneath the lucrative global trafficking are networks of cartels and war-loads; a network of pimps, johns and numerous trans-border traffickers, mafias, gangsters, politicians and conglomerates that operate through porous borders and corrupt migration policy enforcement to ship out and trade humans, drugs and weapons.

We can agree that most successful underground organizations involved in these illicit trades, have God-fathers. The God-father is the superimposing character – well protected and a nexus upon which the conditions and environment of their businesses are mediated. The Godfathers are usually obsolete figures that are at an arm’s length away from the scenes of transactions. They pull cords to control political power through bribery, coercion and indulges in procurement of allegiance from contending politicians and business people. The trading families who control large markets and many trafficking routes become the most powerful, fierce and equally respected. The family business becomes the costa nostra “our thing” and cousins marry fellow cousins to keep the wealth and power within the house.

The La Costa Nostra attitude that was prevalent among the Italian mafias and others in Latin America is what now subsumes the NRM regime under President Museveni. The structure that President Museveni has built in 25 years is strong but is not any different from those operated by rogue elements in illicit trades.

There is no need to explicate this situation any further, but Museveni has consolidated his stronghold on the means of coercion. His iron fisted rule is branded by militarized police brutality. His relatives have consolidated their positions and privileges at the helm of the regime structure and have control of vast amount of land and other economic advantages, including ownership of lands that have minerals, fresh waters and oil reserves.

In the words of Kevin Bales, the renowned anti-human trafficking author and researcher, Ugandans who are not obedient to the networks of first family, are “disposable people”. This is what became very apparent of former VP Gilbert Bukenya. Bukenya’s recent ordeal in jail over his part in CHOGM scandal spoke volumes to those who have the ears to listen and the eyes, not yet bloated by the proceeds of corruption.

Prof Bukenya is a typical example of an uncritical NRM outsider and a conduit. Despite his illustrated administrative competence, he was reduced to a disposable Catholic – Muganda. The moment Bukenya tried to form political shape; he was quickly disposed and presented as the prime agent of corruption. In reality, Bukenya is only (in)subordinate agent.

And let’s put aside the two-faces that we carry. I truly felt for Bukenya as he froze in the coolers. I could not fathom man in Bukenya so determined to remain in the kitchen sink – humiliated and humiliated again. I thought Prof Bukenya would have listened to the messages of the mafia when his son perished in car accident under mysterious circumstances that is only comparable to that of former speaker, Ayume. Bukenya should have known that he is treading a rough path.

But let’s contend that the real problem of corruption in Uganda is neatly weaved and inextricable with the circumstances of President Museveni’s continued tenure of office that has been translated as “our power” by the people close to him.

Let’s be realistic and honest to ourselves before we claim patriotism here. We are chasing our shadows in pretext of tackling corruption. The organism called NRM has mutated to have many corrupt heads. We must identify all the heads and tentacles for it to get capitulated.

I believe that a genuine process of removing corruption from Uganda can only start with regime change. As long as Museveni is still President of Uganda, corruption will move with him for, corruption is the NRM itself!

END 

Uganda is still Primitive State 25 Years under NRM

 POLITICS

This article is an attempt at auditing the NRM on its agenda of modernization Uganda through industrialization. Museveni once diagnosed Uganda as a backward state that needed to industrialize so that the primitive modes of production are replaced subsequently with advanced means of production. Museveni did not articulate how the consumerism pattern would transform to sustain the industrialization.

Museveni’s infatuation with foreign investment is rooted in neo-liberal ideology that was part of the neo- imperial package imposed on developing countries through liberalization of their economies. These economic ideologies advanced the interests of capitalists, to enable them compete, overtake and dominate the poor who form the bulk of consumers.

In 1986 when the NRM took over power, Jinja was a buzzing industrial hub of Uganda. Today it is a ghost town. Then, Museveni sold off all the industries to his regime cronies and all the industries collapsed. That was a lesson that Ugandan entrepreneurs where not competent in shaping the private sector through industrialization. Today, the private sector is customer service oriented – merchandise vending, not manufacturing.

By adapting neo-liberal ideas, Museveni opened up Uganda as a “free market” to foreign investments and not indigenous investors. Museveni prematurely infatuated with the idea that government should withdraw from providing essential services to its population. It was hoped that the private sector innovations could provide these services as demands arose in the open market. But Uganda is not a middle class society, so issues of affordability led to consumer isolation. Majority of Ugandans consume cheap goods or second hand stuff. That’s what they can afford.

Given the time of liberalization of the economy, Ugandans did not have sufficient skills and capacity to operate the private sector. This means that while the government discourteously reduced the size of public servants, it did not enact reciprocal policies that would permit a transition from government employment to sustainable public sector players. The education system was equally not adjusted to prepare Ugandans for this new challenge. In short, the state estranged Ugandans from the economy and reduced the base of income earners.

The recent strikes by Uganda’s teachers and then by small traders in central Kampala revealed a rather bitter reality for Museveni’s bubble economic growth. The inequity in income distribution among public servants has compromised service delivery. Further, that there are no prospects of robust industrialization or modernization as such. The same group of workers that government dealt with in 1986 is the same ones who still dominate the economy – civil servants and petty traders.

I have seen workers Unions in UK and Canada call for strikes. These are industrialized countries from where we emulate all our policies. For instance, the protagonists of the no-term limit in Uganda fervently argued that after all Britain has no term limits, not even a constitution, so why should Uganda have one?

When workers in countries with vibrant public sector go behind the picket, you begin to hear groups such as coal workers, truck drivers, bricklayers, mortuary attendants, Graveyard attendants; car importers, Public Health or Hospital workers, public transportation workers etc conjure up under their Unions to go picketing.

In Uganda, the only people who went on strike were teachers. Even the other public service groups, such as nurses, physicians, researchers, police and prisons did not join the strike. The fact of the matter is that no player from the private sector joined the strike to demand for fair wages or better working conditions.

Now, one can assume that the private sector is a better employer, such that the employees do not feel exploited; that there are so few disgruntled employees in government because government job is so well paying; or that Ugandans generally do not mind the pillages of taxpayers’ money by government through corruption. We could also assume that Ugandans do not mind about the wealth inequities that exist between the various branches of government and the frontline workers.

But the strikes revealed that Uganda is still uncritical and a primitive state, and the production mode remains traditional and primitive twenty-five years after Museveni’s diagnosis, economically speaking!

END.

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.