Last week, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in the United States, published a third rate, alarmist and false story which got reproduced locally alleging that Uganda government was working with Chinese technology communication giant, Huawei, to conduct political surveillance on opposition politicians. It’s third rate because, it didn’t quote anyone either in Uganda, China or at Huawei, but merely referred to ‘highly placed security sources,” and as such passed for propaganda and lazy journalism. 

Early this month President Yoweri Museveni completed his three month  countrywide working tour to mobilize mainly local leaders on socio-economic transformation which entails uplifting rural households by bolstering their food security, production and productivity, wealth creation for income, and entry into commercial enterprises. This tour is among the many that President Museveni has been engaged in with Ugandans over the years against the backdrop of persistent societal resistance to change and adoption to new ways of production among majority of Ugandans.

Last week, the Uganda media, collectively fell for a fabricated story on the purported electoral reform bills, they claimed government had presented to parliament, and basing on falsehoods, generated a frenzied debate laced with toxic language and insults. It appears, the media was fed by a mendacious opposition now on ropes, hoping to derail debate, like they did, during Constitutional amendment in 2017.

As each general election draws closer, the Democratic Party (DP) leadership under the feeble, although ever buoyant and boastful, Norbert Mao, has presented itself as a political platform that accommodates progressive ideas upon which a new national political consensus can be built to replace the National Resistance Movement (NRM). Mao, has lately taken to advising NRM, and publicly claimed that the ‘Luwero Consensus’ which brought NRM to power in 1986, has ‘irretrievably’ collapsed.