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Museveni cracks down, Judas runs scared, no wonder there was no Resurrection

Friday April 28 2017
buwembo

IILLUSTRATION| JOHN NYAGA

There was a joke on Easter weekend around Kampala that there would be no Easter, the reason being that Judas Iscariot was too scared to take the 30 silver pieces and so the plot to kill Jesus could not mature.

This was because of the arrests of officials caught in the act of accepting bribes, as President Yoweri Museveni starts delivering on his promise made after being re-elected last year that this was going to be ‘Kisanja Hakuna Mchezo’ (no-nonsense five-year term).

Before that, one of Museveni’s whispered nicknames has been “Mukubya Byayi” – Luganda for a doting parent who only canes his kids with a dry banana fibre that makes a loud sound but inflicts no pain. This was because of his government’s perceived softness in the handling of white collar criminals.

The ongoing arrests are therefore puzzling to many.  For Ugandans don’t seem to think that prosecution of corruption suspects just because it is the right thing to do, is still enough reason to do so.

What is going on is like shock treatment, as was recently administered to Minister for Labour Herbert Kabafunzaki, who was arrested after allegedly being caught red handed receiving a “small” bribe of Ush5 million (about $1,380) from a businessman. The minister denied the charges while his assistant who was jointly charged with him pleaded guilty.

Before them, two senior Ministry of Finance officials were arrested while allegedly receiving a bigger bribe from a couple of Chinese investors.

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People currently being arrested for corruption are looking for the “real” reason behind their troubles. Our people are yet to tell the difference between “prosecution” and “persecution,” and use the latter word to mean the former. The Labour Minister has hilariously accused the opposition political party FDC of framing him!

It will understandably take some time before our people accept that corruption has to be followed by prosecution.

A minister who gets arrested over receiving a thousand dollars probably thinks of  public officials who have “made” millions of dollars but are walking around scot free, and asks himself, “Why me?”

For instance, it was recently established by a commission of inquiry that some four trillion shillings (well over a billion dollars) was stolen in a few years from the Uganda National Roads Authority.

A minister who got prosecuted in the roads saga got re-elected to parliament, which was okay since he had not yet been pronounced guilty, but voters were actually sympathetic to him, thinking that he was being persecuted.
That a person accused of such a crime can stand in an election is only surprising to a non-Ugandan, because here, even people guilty of election offences are allowed to stand in the by-election arising from their criminal acts.
The president will need to engage more people to secure their buy-in over the crackdown. The Inspector General of Government (Ombudsman), for example, says prosecuting magistrates who take small bribes of Ush200,000 ($55) isn’t cost-effective, while her senior colleague, the Chief Justice, insists no price for justice is too high and no amount stolen is too small.
So the crackdown on bribe-taking magistrates is also underway.
If the current campaign is sustained, the people will be convinced that Mzee Museveni is now carrying a whip and not a dry banana leaf, and he will get re-baptised Hakuna Mchezo.

Joachim Buwembo is a social and political commentator based in Kampala. E-mail: [email protected].

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