The Bible in Exodus and Deuteronomy talks of God ordering Israel to destroy Amalek for ambushing Israelis while exiting Egypt. “Put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys,” which prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is delivering without remorse.
The United Kingdom government sanction on Speaker Annet Anita Among and two former ministers is like holding a stick from the wrong end and shouldn’t spin heads in Uganda. After all a while back, similar measures were placed on Gen. Kale Kayihura and Prisons Commissioner General Johnson Byabashaija, yet life has continued normally.
A visit to a multi-billion Odukul community valley tank in Kapelebyong Town council, Kapelebyong district demonstrates one gross lack of responsibility by government agencies especially the ministry of water and environment which purported to have constructed a reliable source of water for this stressed community emerging from armed rebellion and Karamojong cattle rustling.
In the last one-week alone, President Yoweri Museveni nearly 80 years old, and 38 leading government, has engaged in several public meetings to propagate policy and penned two illustrative media articles, on Tin processing industry, and the current tax dispute by Kampala City traders under KACITA. These articles are of international repute on the direction Uganda, and indeed Africa ought to take to secure socio-economic transformation, emancipation, and liberation from historical dependence syndrome.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the short-lived and vanquished former leading opposing party is on a death row from suicide, and neither Kizza Besigye, Patrick Oboi Amuria nor Erias Lukwago can salvage it, at least not before the 2026 general elections. The return of Besigye, from ‘political holiday’ to use his own words will certainly complicate its political maneuvers with other opposition groups especially NUP that displaced FDC as the leading opposition party in and outside parliament.
The temptations are always present especially when the mighty dangle favours on your way into the wild world from the comfort zones. The knee-jerk decision by parliament to belatedly realign the retirement benefits including granting person-to-holder 500m ‘service award’ to outgoing Auditor General John Muwanga who still has two years of service sets a bad precedent although its architects may sneer. It points to absence of a coherent system, decisions based on personal whims, susceptible to abuse and stinks.
If you have been in formal employment especially so in government service for over three decades mingling with the mighty, being called Sir, your official car and travel expenses, official leave, medical bills and even drivers are paid for from the public purse, you have to suffer some levels of trepidations of the unknown as you get into old age induced retirement. And yet however stupid, crafty, or clumsy you were, your opinions on a variety of issues mattered or at least appeared, and you probably even thought you were irreplaceable,
On Monday this week a temporary, misplaced euphoria greeted the UN Security Council chambers in New York and probably some parts of the world after the much-belated passage of a resolution demanding a ceasefire during Ramadhan and after by Israel on its ongoing genocidal in the Gaza Strip now in its 175 day with 32,337 dead civilians. Many have died for no fault of their own expect being in Gaza. The resolution, desirable as is, comes too late, too little and a lullaby to the world that US and its western allies care.
Money accumulated primitively may be good, but cannot buy love, although reports of underhand behaviours at parliament accompanied by silence across the aisle suggests it might still help one acquire a Leonardo da Vinci painted ermine. The nexus between money and political power aren’t new, as the House of Commons history whose tradition our parliament borrows demonstrates.
Holding top leaders with a large sense of self- in Uganda to account is a mucky job but someone has to do it. They usually don’t appreciate that in God’s law there is no statute of limitation. And so in their own world of ghosts they cannot believe that there are no witches because they often tremble at curses.
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