After reading President Museveni’s two-part interview with Daniel Kalinaki, Monitor Managing Editor which was posted on the website on April 11 and 12, 2010, I contacted Monitor readers – Ugandans and non-Ugandans – for their assessment. They all agreed that the president’s performance fell short of expectations especially as he prepares for 2011 presidential elections. Two main reasons were given – either he was tired or he is no longer on top of developments in Uganda. They even wondered why he did not praise his government for controlling inflation, maintaining a high level of economic growth and per capita income, reducing poverty and providing universal primary education which has been extended to secondary education because these have been areas of NRM’s strength. Let me make some observations selectively because Uganda newspapers restrict my articles to around 700 words.
First, on the issue of democracy, President Museveni has allowed presidential and parliamentary elections to take place every five years because development partners have made them a condition for foreign aid and technical assistance. Since 1996, President Museveni’s popularity has declined with each election. This is not the kind of information the President would want to share with Ugandans much less with the outside world which has given him much support particularly for macroeconomic stability.
Second, the President recorded success in the modernization and commercialization of agriculture. Uganda’s agriculture has not yet been modernized. The majority of farmers still use hand hoes and depend on rain-fed agriculture which have been used since time immemorial! Agricultural productivity is still very low and much of the produce goes to waste because of lack of cold storage and processing facilities including for milk in much of the countryside.
The NRM government has introduced commercial agriculture the wrong way. Usually, farmers sell surplus over and above domestic requirements and gradually as cash incomes improve move out of subsistence farming into other activities. In Uganda the policy of producing for cash rather than for the stomach has resulted in many households selling below subsistence level or selling nutritious produce like beans, chickens, eggs, vegetables and fish etc and ending up with insufficient amounts of cassava, maize or plantains that contain only carbohydrates. Eating insufficient foodstuffs in quantity and quality has resulted in severe under-nutrition especially among women and children, disabling children mentally and physically and making women produce underweight children with permanent disabilities. Commercialization of food outside Uganda has resulted in domestic shortages contributing to government failure to launch a school feeding program which was endorsed by NEPAD (New Partnership for Africa’s Development).
Third, I agree with the President when he said that the NRM is a political force that aggregates the positive qualities and suppresses the negative tendencies of Ugandans. He added that “… we help to remedy them because our aim is to save, not to kill people”. But earlier on the President had said that in the army Ugandans are punished severely even for looting. Should a soldier be executed for looting a shop?
Fourth, the President said that he has been doing everything to solve poverty. But he has not succeeded as demonstrated by the mounting preventable or easily treatable diseases of poverty like jiggers, trachoma, scabies and under-nutrition, etc. To reduce poverty, Uganda needs to invest more in quality education, nutrition, jobs, rural energy, roads, housing, water and sanitation and shoes. Wearing shoes is not a luxury, they keeps away jiggers, hookworms and injuries, etc.
Fourth, in defending the presidential jet, the President gave some answers that demonstrate the difficulty of addressing the subject. He said, inter alia, “Like recently when I went to Brazil. I do not know how long it would have taken me to go by commercial planes”. All he needed to do was ask one of his assistants to call any airline office in Kampala and he would have got the answer in minutes.
The picture of patients lying on the floor in Masaka referral hospital not only demonstrates the level of poverty but more importantly raises questions about the way the government sets priorities like spending so much public money on hosting expensive conferences and summits like the Commonwealth and AU or buying such an expensive presidential jet.
Fifth, regarding the disproportionate number of government officials in top positions in the cabinet, the army, and other institutions coming from western Uganda, the President using permanent secretaries in his office showed that it was not true. However, had he used the ministry of foreign affairs at headquarters and in missions abroad especially the most strategic embassies, and the army, the answer would have confirmed the disproportionate representation (of a small section) of western Uganda.