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NRM conference: The Great Museveni Mystery continues

Saturday December 20 2014

In a recent speech that must have sounded familiar to his audience of over 10,000 members of the ruling NRM and other Ugandans who listen to his pronouncements, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda lashed out at officials who delay the implementation of government projects and others who are responsible for the failure of those that actually get implemented.

He cited specific projects that have ended in abject failure despite costing billions of shillings in taxpayers’ money. He threatened officials who frustrate investors. He said they were making “a mistake” which amounts to “treason.”

Turning to a subject of more direct relevance to deliberations at the NRM’s national delegates conference which he was addressing, he lamented what he called the “political disorientation” of some of those in attendance and the disconnect between the party headquarters and grassroots branches.

The speech had echoes of many he has made over the years, and specifically those he made while out campaigning to be re-elected way back in late 2010 and early 2011. Then, as the campaigns had become more frenetic and heated, with opposition politicians and the general public complaining about and highlighting failures in service delivery, he had taken to blaming civil servants and local leaders.

He wouldn’t own up to responsibility for the lacklustre quality of public administration that leaves ordinary people under-served or unserved with public goods for which they pay taxes and for which billions of shillings are budgeted and disbursed every year. There are paradoxes here.

President Museveni, whatever his opponents may claim to the contrary, is a leader who is much loved by a sizeable portion of Ugandans who while voting for him repeatedly also complain all the time and volubly about the failure by his government to do for them what governments are supposed to do for their citizens.

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If there is any connection between the way they vote and poor service delivery, they certainly don’t see it. Also, President Museveni, many Ugandans know, is a very powerful man who, when he wants things to happen, makes them happen.

So why does he sound as if he is not in charge when it comes to his government failing to perform some of its core functions?

And as core functions go, perhaps nowhere does the government perform as abysmally as when it comes to co-ordination, regulation, and supervision. Evidence for this is almost everywhere one looks.

Let us take the example of the energy and transport sectors. Uganda is the only country in the entire Great Lakes region where the cost of petrol and diesel is subject to the whims of individual dealers, with almost each one setting their own price. It is also the one country where complaints about some fuel dealers supplying adulterated petrol and diesel are common, suggesting not enough is done in response by the concerned government bodies.

A combination of arbitrary fuel pricing and failure of regulation has opened the way for the owners and drivers of public service vehicles to hit commuters with arbitrary fares, with different taxis plying the same routes charging different amounts. Commuters who dare to protest, and only a very small minority do so, could be told “Genda ogule eyiyo” (go buy your own car).

It gets worse during rush hour on Kampala’s crowded roads. It gets far worse during national holidays such as Easter and Christmas, when people wishing to travel upcountry are compelled to part with as much as three times what is ordinarily charged.

Which is why I was struck to learn recently that in Rwanda, public transport fares are subject to regulation by the country’s
utilities regulatory agency, and that they cannot be varied arbitrarily by the owners or drivers of public service vehicles whenever they want to make an extra buck.

As Christmas approaches, Ugandans who do not own cars but would like to travel upcountry and celebrate it away from the noise and stress of urban living cannot be sure they will be able to afford the extortionate fares bus and taxi owners are going to demand.

Remarkably, this run-away laissez-faire has infiltrated the one domain in which poor Ugandans are supposed to enjoy government protection: Education.

Not too long ago I was asked to visit a secondary school attended by some young relatives. I went there to see the headmaster about an issue of concern. The school is both a day school and a boarding school. Children who go back home at the end of the day suffer the massive disadvantage of not attending night-time classes, which the school uses to complete the syllabus ahead of time.

Parents and guardians who consider this to be unfair and who complain about it are “encouraged” to put their charges into the boarding section. Otherwise nothing can be done about it. This, I later learnt from other people, is apparently common practice across the country. Which shows the government is at best absent-minded, at worst sleeping on the job.

And yet the president keeps winning election after election.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs.

E-mail: [email protected]

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