Tag Archives: again

What to remember in Uganda’s 2011 elections

As we head into the holiday season and the 2011 elections, all Ugandans are being requested for the sake of our children and theirs, to think carefully about which candidates at presidential and parliamentary and lower levels you should vote for. You should not vote for a candidate because he/she is your relative or your friend or your neighbor. Instead, you should vote for a candidate you are convinced will serve the interests of Uganda best. Sitting members of parliament should be rejected or re-elected based on their record. It is better to consider someone who has a public record of service rather than gamble on fresh candidates and you regret later. Age and gender should not be the issue. In your communities you know who can deliver best. You should not be scared because a candidate is wearing a military uniform. In the final analysis they are as vulnerable as we all are.

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Uganda’s development is being sacrificed again

Uganda is sacrificing its development – for the third time – as government directs its attention to hosting the United Nations peace keeping force of 50,000 military and police contingents, and 11,000 civilian staff budgeted at $5 billion (about 11 trillion shillings) a year. Ugandans who don’t know the challenges and implications of a project of this magnitude may dance in jubilation, hoping jobs will be created for Ugandans making poverty history. First of all the peace keepers will be internationally recruited with few jobs if any going to Ugandans with connections. Secondly, besides being the best political donation for Museveni and his NRM party a few months before presidential and parliamentary elections which is bad news for opposition parties, Uganda will also experience unprecedented shortages and high prices.

Uganda’s development has been delayed twice already because of ideological wars – the cold war between the capitalist west and the communist east which began in 1945 and ended in 1990; and the economic war between market forces and state intervention or socialism which began in the 1980s and is still with us although it was officially abandoned in Uganda in 2009. Uganda did very well economically and socially, especially in the 1960s before the impact of the cold war became evident. Donor funds and Uganda taxes were put to good use with tangible results. Quality education and health care were realized, infrastructure such as roads were paved, agricultural production facilitated by cooperatives increased, food security improved and more money was put into the pockets of farmers and those who provided services to the agriculture sector.

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Why ethnicity is rising again

There is a recognition that the colonial philosophy of divide and rule through indirect methods intensified ethnic, religious and geographical divisions. Colonial authorities favored some groups over others either in compensation for their role in suppressing resistance as in Uganda or because of racial resemblance as in Rwanda and Burundi. Consequently Baganda in Uganda, Batutsi in Burundi and Rwanda and Bahima and Bahororo in south west Uganda benefited disproportionately. They got educated, good jobs and gained tremendous political, economic and social power over the majority – the commoners.

The struggle for independence based on democracy and majority rule reversed colonial arrangements in many countries. In Uganda and Rwanda, for example, commoners – by virtue of their numerical superiority – captured power and corrected colonial injustices. Allocation of development resources, jobs in the cabinet, civil service and public enterprises were reorganized to bring about ethnic and geographical balance.

In Zambia, former President Kaunda used to argue that he had appointed so and so from one province over so and so from another province because he wanted to achieve regional balance. In Cote d’Ivoire the late President Houphouet-Boigny played a carefully ethnic balancing act that kept the country together.

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