Opinions | MINISTRY OF ICT AND NATIONAL GUIDANCE

19 April 2025

TRUMP TRADE TARIFFS OVERRATED: CHINA REMAINS THE REAL ECONOMIC DEAL

One would expect a thorough study before major policy shift announcements, but it seems Donald Trump’s tariffs are a kneejerk response to US’s growing inability to compete effectively in a ‘free’ market economy it had preached when world conditions still favored it. Consequently, Trump appears to smash the glass doors, make U-turns, cuts back, gives unilateral unexplained exemptions like this week on one million iPhones sets alongside semiconductors, solar cells, memory cards and other electronic devises imports from China, hoping no one noticed. By that silent stroke, Trump exempted China’s single biggest export by value to the US. China’s response should be strategic, targeted and surgical stopping importation of over 250 metric tons of chicken feet annually from US worth US 469m dollars, oilseeds, soybeans, corn and wheat , and raise control of rare earth minerals export to the US. A string of humiliation in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, the US is smiting with a vengeance in a new world where its superpower prowess cannot dictate terms like the yesteryears. A superpower that rose, maintained and still seeks to keep its status through old trickery, lopsided rules, bullying, blackmail, robbery, and when all fail, brute force, will not last long, is staring into a dark pit, waiting to implode. The world is seeing Trump’s cold calculations delivered with bluster as he hides in plain view, but he thinks he is in a thick forest. And all Trump’s megalomaniac tactics are good lessons for the world particularly Africa which has marginally survived on the periphery since Eden. Trump’s America is failing to innovate and compete with China at the global stage and hence resorting to blackmail and applying its well-known strongarm tactics. A superpower that slapped trade embargo on poor African countries for simply refusing to buy used secondhand clothes, women’s knickers and bras from the US, doesn’t deserve respect. Trump is in trepidation of China’s supercharged smart technology, cost-effective labor, and global network for raw materials under the Road and Belt Initiative enabling it to build robust industrial, manufacturing, assembly and trading infrastructure especially in emerging territories hitherto sidelined by the west. A superpower that fears, and cannot face competition in a ‘free’ capitalist world it preached for ages to others when still convenient, is simply overrated. And with a population of 1.4bn that rose from obscurity only 40 years ago when America and its western allies didn’t support it, China cannot be browbeaten into line today. Likewise Trump’s push for Russia-Ukraine settlement, is a calculated lullaby to divert world attention from Israel’s war crime underway in Gaza and its land grab dubbed ‘expanding security corridor’ without anyone waving it down. It is a heartless naked double standard that has exposed US exceptionalism even to the dumbest watchers of global politics. Trump’s demand to NATO members to increase their defence spending though prudent, aims to force them lockdown Russia while US focuses mainly on China. That way, there is division of labour in the imperial war of attrition, and hope to easily succeed. In the smog of Trump’s muddled Russia-Ukraine meddling, global sweeping trade tariffs for protectionism, and his domestic disputes, he seems to be succeeding in shielding Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu from any meaningful scrutiny by the UN or their own western allies who often posture as the defenders of human rights and international rules. Since the collapse of the temporary peace deal for hostage, and prisoner swap, Israel has resumed its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza’s defenseless women and children, and doesn’t hide its cynicism referring to victims as Hamas militants. The US, UK, France and Germany face crumbling public infrastructure in energy, health, education and employment because they can no longer steal from the world with impunity, and unable to return to glorious manufacturing when they confiscate other’s assets as done to Russia and Venezuela.

By Ofwono Opondo

12 April 2025

NRM AND YOWERI MUSEVENI; A DICTATORSHIP THAT OILS THE OPPOSITION

Galatians 3:13. “Cursed is everyone who’s hanged on a tree.” Five years since the 2021 general elections, pointers show that opposition political serpents in the National Unity Platform (NUP), Democratic P(DP), Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), and infertile Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) are in disarray from within and outside. The infant so-called Popular Peoples Front (PPF), formed by political crybabies Erias Lukwago, Kizza Besigye, Omulongo Wasswa Birigwa and Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, is most likely a stillbirth, and yet a spider’s web has only caught flies. The cards in NUP, DP, FDC and UPC are collapsing in spectacular ways because of internal intrigue, conspiracies, sabotage, open hostilities, and apparent infiltration, that their canters cannot hold under the evolving explosive fallouts as the cavalcades draw down. In a metaphorical sense, this forthcoming general elections is actually for NRM to lose if it doesn’t tidy up its many blatant careless acts. Even if voters don’t transfer their anger against NRM for lack of better alternatives, as in 2021,and recently Kawempe North, they could just stay away from the ballot boxes. All opposition groups have been driving an old cliché, and false narrative conjured by former humiliated UPC ‘Iron lady’ Cecilia Atim Ogwal, between 1986 and 2005, and may she continue to rest in peace, that the NRM and Museveni were a ‘monolithic dictatorship’. Now, most have seen, that each opposition group, or leader since Milton Obote, Ogwal, Tiberio Okeny Atwoma, Michael Kaggwa of DP-Mobilisers Group, Paul Ssemogerere, Aggrey Awori, James Rwanyarare, Yonasani Kanyomozi, Kizza Besigye, Patrick Amuriat among others, have each, one by one, fallen. It is still hard to tell for how long the current opposition will stand. NRM and Yoweri Museveni are a ‘dictatorship’ that majorly on its own enacted a law that recognizes political parties opposed to them, including having the Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LoP), and all opposition parties in parliament heavily funded from state coffers, commensurate to their numerical strength, and they utilise the money given in ways they deem fit. NRM, certainly, should be a benevolent dictatorship, not the worst kind. NRM is also a ‘dictatorship’ that permits the opposition in parliament to annually present an alternative State of the Nation Address (SONA) and Budget, following the government ones, and both are actually discussed on the floor of parliament. NRM is a ‘dictatorship’ that has ceded the leadership, management and control of all accountability committees like PAC, COSASE, and Government Assurances among others in parliament to the obtusely shallow opposition parties which have turned them into financial and other forms of aggrandizement. And let us, be charitable, for lack of a better word, NRM and Museveni is a ‘dictatorship’ in which the leaders of opposition parties are hands-in-glove with government, including for DP president Norbert Mao and Betty Among of UPC as cabinet ministers. To be magnanimous, looking at the physical appearances of the most vocal, even virulent opposition leaders like Robert Kyagulanyi (NUP), Joel Ssenyonyi (LoP), Louis Rubongoya (NUP-SG), Mao, Jimmy Akena (UPC), Nandala Mafabi, Lukwago, Ssemujju Nganda, sneering Medard Segona, ever frothing Muwanga Kivumbi, or Mathias Mpuuga Nsamba now in near limbo, and their many sidekicks, you cannot say they are not round-faced, oily, and shiny in well-polished suits, neckties and shoes to match. A ‘dictatorship’ usually drives its political opponents underground, stifles their physical presence, commercial businesses, forces them into unsafe exile, and in some cases assassination. NRM must make opposition groups own up their many contradictions, so as to beat them politically at the next elections, and NRM should not panic in fear and retreat that it is getting past time to explain, defend its record and what it truly stands for. Procrastination, and vacillating in trepidation in face of opposition propaganda cannot make NRM win this ning battle of a life time in 2026.

By Ofwono Opondo

05 April 2025

BUGANDA QUESTION IN UGANDA AND ROBERT KYAGULANYIS EMPTY HUBRIS

In the political fog of Alfonse Chigamoy Owiny-Dollo’s Supreme Court ruling, Kizza Besigye botched trial at the General Court Martial, and Kawempe North byelection, a little hubris blew over Mengo, seat of Buganda’s old feudal institution, referred to as a ‘kingdom’. In an otherwise careless mistake, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics conjured delineation of Buganda as North, and South-central Uganda, which tickled heads, and set loose togues wagging that ‘Buganda had been erased’ from the map of Uganda. Resurrecting the charge, abandoned by Kabaka Ronald Mutebi years back, was, Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, hoping to extract undue political capital. But his shallow efforts fell to the bottom, because, Katikiro Charles Peter Mayiga, promptly debunked him. Speaking with suppressed contempt, Mayiga questioned if ‘Buganda had been lifted out of Uganda and taken to Congo or Tanzania, and how that could possibly be done.’ And with that, Kyagulanyi died silently in his own movie. Kyagulanyi, with a relatively short stint in public politics, relishes bending facts and reality, unfortunately, with so little tact. Julius Kambarage Nyerere, used to say that people who are politically bankrupt, often seek refuge in archaic narratives of religion and ethnicity as their main factor of mobilisation. In Uganda’s case, it is easy to know and identify them, although we have not been able to decisively isolate them from a gullible population. These malcontents haven’t understood how Mandela and Nyerere became citizens not only of their respective countries, but Africa and the world, representing causes, struggles across races and the globe. Somehow, they still believe that their miniature ‘kings’ and ‘kingdoms’ are great, or capable of greatness in Uganda and the world. Madiba, Nyerere, Indhira Gandhi, or Fidel Castro, and all people who have been great in the recent modern era, became so by liberating themselves from the idiocy of tribal, religious and racial chauvinism. Kyagulanyi, and some people in Mengo who think alike ought to know that since ‘Buganda’ failed to keep its greatness in the so-called ‘golden’ times, and was conquered by a few religious colonists posing as missionaries when many parts of present-day Uganda were still remote peripheries, that ‘greatness’ cannot be reinvented alone in isolation. The earlier this fact sinks, the better, otherwise, Mengo stand to lose another century fighting lost causes. Today, much of Buganda, including the precincts of Bulange, Mengo, Lubiri, Namirembe, Kasubi, and the surrounding environments of Kyadondo, Busiro, Kyaggwe, Buddu, Bulemezi, Singo and Buvuma, are so cosmopolitan, making it very difficult for feudal chauvinists to succeed. Buganda like other regions of Uganda face common afflictions of poverty resultant from lack of technology, productivity, critical skills, transport, energy, and industrial infrastructure which must be tackled jointly in a coordinated manner to dig Uganda out of the hole. Mengo apparatchiks have since 1953 under Governor Andrew Cohen unsuccessfully tried to extort with menaces which led to Edward Mutesa’s deportation to England. They then extolled and extorted Milton Obote in an electoral marriage of convenience that didn’t last long. Idi Amin was welcomed on a clean carpet and praised as saviour for deposing Obote and returning Mutesa’s corpse. Undone, they warmed up to Gen. Tito Okello Lutwa head of a most primitive military junta, and later president Yoweri Museveni who restored a defunct kingdom, its estates and has doled out massive public money, but is nevertheless, now being kicked. While many Ugandans are not in favour of a hard tackle with Mengo or Bugandaism, a frank engagement is necessary to save Uganda, that we all call home where no one group should demand special privileges. History tells us that monarchies are built and survive on sweat, and blood of the underprivileged. They are embroidery made by the hands of poor grandmothers, and never on a legacy to advance liberty, freedom, individual human rights or happiness.

By Ofwono Opondo

30 March 2025

COURTS, SOCIAL MEDIA FRENZY; THE NEED TO TAME ELITE POLITICAL ARROGANCE

Usually, there would be neither goal, nor benefit in taking pleasure in the trials and tribulations of men, because after all, they are not made of real steel, but soft soils. Kizza Besigye, arrogant uncouth lawyerman Eron Kizza, and table bang-man Isaac Ssemakadde who had momentarily recently come on top of the world, are now all chilling lonely from different underground locations. Much of their self-inflicted wounds were driven by the false pursuit of pseudo fame of politics, and media, especially today’s superficial social media where everyone is clever, only by a half. Now the world is so quiet and serene, in ways many didn’t anticipate. The trio failed to appreciate that the world actually doesn’t rotate around men, but the other way round. As the Baganda would say, Uganda Law Society president, “Ssemakadde kati alira ku nsiko”, as in undeclared and undisclosed self-imposed exile. Ssemakadde came in a hurricane, chainsaw in hand, in premeditation to cut down Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka, DPP Jane Frances Abodo, CJ Owiny-Dollo, and High Court Judge Musa Sekana. Now, the supposed lawman, has run away and in hiding from the law. For a man, whose election was only recently so volatile, electrifying, sensational, and spoke with so much insulting unprovoked contempt, to have his braggadocio neatly folded in such a short time, he needs to respect those who have traveled a longer distance than himself in public life. Kizza Besigye’s lawyers, political surrogates alongside journeymen, and the so-called human rights defenders, wanted him, if he has any criminal case, to be tried in the civilian courts. But, for strange reasons, the state had foolishly opted for the much-disputed military court martial. Another local adage, “he who chases you, gives you wisdom,” comes in very handy here, as the hullabaloo, including the media frenzy campaign #FreeBesigye, has now, on its own, collapsed, almost completely. And what a good tiding, that the political tantrums of his ‘companion’, Winnie Byanyima, delivered with hyperbole, too have died out. Besigye’s orchestrated political blackmail, through a self-generated hunger strike, seeking to end his own life in humiliation, came to naught. Dead people are buried, and life moves on. Heroes Day, 9 June, is still more than two months away, and it is unlikely that a good big tree on which to hang Kizza Besigye has been found. That threat, conveyed through cold-sad humour, was perhaps only meant for psychological warfare. To maintain the unchallenged authority, dignity, respect and decorum of courts of law, even when we disagree with their judicial decisions, lawyers Eron Kizza and Ssemakadde following the footsteps of Male Mabirizi, ought to be made good examples, otherwise the public may have no place of refuge when there are disputes. Eggs have to be broken, to make good omelet. The overtures by justice minister Norbert Mao, reported in the media, if true, that he seeks to have Ssemakadde’s conviction and the two-year jail term for contempt of court, negotiated, has no basis in law, but probably only as a political appeasement, but Kizza Eron, who has served sometime in jail and learnt his lesson, ought to be granted parole. In the old days, of ‘Dr’ Idi Amin Dada-Field Marshal, Life President and Conqueror of the British Empire, and UPC under Apollo Milton Obote, the army, police and intelligence personnel were a law onto themselves. Today, the UPDF, even with Kawempe north byelection fracas, is still a much better army Ugandans can rely on to do good. Just imagine, if all UPDF Generals, in their bloated numbers, were allowed a freewheel from self-inflated ego and passage. As we face another round of NRM primaries, usually fraught with absurdities including open electoral bribery and violence, NRM must, this time apply drastic measures on its high-profile instigators of election malpractices including outright disqualification, to bring back discipline.

By Ofwono Opondo

23 March 2025

KAWEMPE NORTH BYELECTION: NRM AND THE FEAR OF THE BITTER TRUTH

The National Resistance Movement (NRM) party has just suffered a heavy defeat in the Kawempe Division North parliamentary byelection held last week to replace Muhammad Ssegirinya. Through many of our own missteps, Ssegirinya made a great name for himself, and now, even in death, he is tacitly being honoured by NRM’s repudiation of the election results as a sham. Many people, even casual observers, see the rejection of the election results mostly as an exercise in futility, perhaps intended to avoid the painful political truth of newfound untenable methods, a popularity under stress, and a contest that is dwindling. By publicly overlaying the threats posed by NUP goons, NRM inadvertently instilled fear among its own supporters and voters. The counter-heavy deployment of Police and the army also intimidated opposition supporters, leading to the appallingly low voter turnout of only 18% – 28,002 voters out of the 199,500 registered voters. NRM’s revolutionary and progressive methods now appear abandoned in favour of the cheap conveniences of laxity, soft money, bribery, corruption, and even political violence. These tactics are driving away supporters, voters and people of good common sense, yet its leaders are afraid to publicly admit it. Someone within NRM must tell the cat. Seeing Prime Minister ‘Maijegere’ Robinah Nabbanja parade one of Ssegirinya’s alleged young orphans to extract votes was base, considering the circumstances of his death. NRM last won in Kawempe and Lubaga divisions of Kampala a long time ago – 25 years and counting. Since the return of multiparty democracy, it has suffered repeated drubbings in Kampala, which has become its Waterloo, with no end to its misery in sight. NRM already has a huge parliamentary working majority of 378 out of 529, which is not well-utilised. One wonders why the party turned this byelection – for a seat lasting only seven months before the general election – into a high-stakes, do-or-die affair. There were too many cooks and too many hands in the pie, pulling in different directions for different goals, ultimately spoiling the broth. With the vibrancy of a young population – mostly uneducated, unemployable, or educated with high but unfulfilled expectations – enjoying the radio, television and social media sunshine, yet possessing voting rights, it is difficult to see this misery ending soon if NRM maintains the same laxity and false sense of entitlement. In general elections, especially for the presidency and in recent byelection losses, NRM figures – starting with the obtuse Central Executive Committee – have often sought scapegoats rather than accepting the glaringly evident truths surrounding the party’s current political manoeuvring. In the Buganda region – once a stronghold – and increasingly in Busoga, with expanding urbanisation, NRM could soon become a species threatened with extinction. Renting electoral campaign crowds or relying on bravado and militarism are unlikely to be effective solutions. To survive, NRM must return to hard, creative, and innovative proactive political mobilisation, alongside delivering good public services to the broad majority of Ugandans. The deliberate fabrication, falsification, embellishment and exaggeration of security and political intelligence as underhand methods against our adversaries during elections have become too common and embarrassing to be believed, even by the average member of the public. It may be true that NUP activists had planned to orchestrate the most heinous crimes in Kawempe, particularly on polling day, but that is only known to security agencies. However, given past similar accusations that collapsed under scrutiny, the state needed to do better and apply an even hand. Watching fully dressed police, military, and counter-terrorism officers, armed to the teeth with sophisticated lethal weapons of war, assault election campaigners, voters and journalists and ransack polling stations to scatter voting materials even NRM supporters could not hide their trepidation at how low we had sunk. Rather than going to court or throwing unhelpful political tantrums over the Kawempe loss, NRM should simply wash off the heavy mud on its shoes. Blaming others, when we have been in charge of Uganda for the past four decades, is not a very clever strategy.

By Ofwono Opondo

15 March 2025

KAPELEBYONG; RETIREMENT, AND HOW FAST KAMPALA PEOPLE FORGET YOU

Mid last year I retired from one active-duty service, and now remain on political secondment by President Yoweri Museveni to my present duty station of the last twelve years, at the Uganda Media Centre (UMC). Apparently, as one grows, you mostly think about how to age in peace, tranquility, modest wealth, good health, and when possible, good company of family, relatives and community. A year now in my ancestral Mulanda, and gradually adapting to Alungamosimosi, Kapelebyong in north most Teso, you realise, you are actually dispensable, Kampala people forget about you so easily. So don’t lie to yourself. I have not had the time to know the names of the new KCCA executive director, or resident city commissioner, but my old memory tells me that the Lord Mayor, otherwise also known as inflagmento delicto, is Erias Lukwago, now full-time private legal counsel paid from the public purse for the estranged Kizza Besigye Kifefe, Luzira prison resident. And while there is no retirement age in politics and political assignments, it is good to have and implement a good plan in time even when your appointment authority may still have trust in you. Many probably still remember how old comrade, James Magode Ikuya came visibly barely able to limp by himself to his swearing-in ceremony as State Minister for East African Affairs in May 2021. These days we catch up mostly on the phone and he is as fit as a fiddle. It has been a while, not seeing, meeting or hearing from one of the best rabble rouser, NRM cadre, mentor and comrade, Maj. Roland Kakooza-Mutale although I know he is chilling in his farm in Komamboga, Wakiso district. When Robert Kabushenga (Rob Kabush), tongue-in-cheek, said ‘guys it’s tough, we’re broke, we can’t afford life,’ many sneered. See Noble Mayombo, Aronda Nyakairima, Paul Lokech, Jacob Oulanyah, or even Gen. Elly Tumwine, the soldier-officer, who fired the first bullet on Tarehe Sita 1981 at Kabamba UNLA military garrison, Mubende. We have even forgotten the ebullient Iron Lady Cecilia Atim Ogwal, Aggrey Siryoyi Awori, and wordsmiths John Nagenda and Tamale Mirundi. Who remembers Gen. Adris Mustafa, Idi Amin’s vice president who didn’t even know how to spell his own names. In the days gone by, my office side tables and corners had overflows with Christmas and new year gifts of desk and wall calendars, diaries, gift boxes of assorted items, usually expensive wines, spirits, teas and coffee, chocolates, biscuits, bouquets, and other vanities, sometimes you wouldn’t even know how to use them. Then there were invitation cards to high social gatherings like marriage, birthday and celebrations of achievements. Over the last year, these things have been thinning out for me probably because when they come, I don’t respond in time because of the distance between Kampala and my new locations. As for me, these days when State House protocol calls, usually hours to a scheduled event, and yet you have to take a Covid test, running back from Kapelebyong can be challenging. Sometimes, you may just end up sending apologies for inability to attend the event. But those guys are tough, they never give up easily, not knowing that you are preparing for the inevitable retirement that no one helps you plan for. At past four score, in old school mathematics, the energy is going down, and what is left, should ideally be spent on tying the loose ends of life, although comrade Matia Kasaija, in his characteristic loud jocular verbosity will likely say that his economy is just beginning to rev upwards, in comfort that few can challenge his assertions with contrary verifiable figures. After thirty-eight years on an ever-rolling stage, where the cacophony surrounds you, it is probably time to switch off the telephone, radio, television, newspaper and social media noise. But, with a tough election staring, perhaps retirement shouldn’t be an option yet.

By Ofwono Opondo

08 March 2025

COURT MARTIAL TRIAL OF CIVILIANS; NRM HAS ITS BACK AGAINST THE WALL

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling almost a month ago, rendering the UPDF General Court Martial (GCM) a mere disciplinary unit within the army, that has no jurisdiction to try criminal offences, including that committed by its own army personnel, the government has been sent panicking. As it stands, there is danger that mischievous personnel can now go on impunity errands, much the same way the crooks and corrupt in the civil service are playing endless games in the civilian courts to avoid being held to strict accountability, thereby defeating justice. The overall net result here with all of us, an inefficient, laid back, corrupt, unaccountable, civil service that cannot deliver the desired public goods in time. There had been running controversies of the court’s jurisdiction presiding over criminal cases involving civilians especially political activists linked to treachery, treason, mis-prison of treason, and gun-related offences among others, that were challenged in Constitutional Court, and ended up on appeal at the Supreme Court. In panic, and knee-jerk reaction, last week , the NRM parliamentary Caucus convened to try and hammer out consensus on legislation amendments to the UPDF Act 2005, to recalibrate the court’s jurisdiction, but from the grapevine, critics including legal professionals, opposition groups, and the so-called democracy activists, however dubious, are spoiling for a hard fight. Although with a dominant majority, NRM, with timid legs and stammering tongues, is destined to find hard times on parliament floor to persuasively sell the desired changes. By its own public conduct, that have become overboard, not well presented, carelessly spoken for, or sometimes rushed through, NRM has increasingly lent itself to accusations that it doesn’t act in good faith, but rather self-serving, leading to the gradual loss of trust in a number of its pursuits however genuine or noble. When NRM ushered in security, peace and stability, democracy, constitutionalism, rule of law, respect for human rights, regular elections, and broad freedoms including speech and vibrant debates, many of its cadres and government workers went asleep, and are now reaping the bitter fruits from its own badly nourished gardens. NRM and its myriad of policies are now constantly on the backfoot, reactionary and even overboard violence. NRM lost its way in the legal woods when it appointed liberals and reactionary legal professionals like Abu Mayanja, Mayanja Nkangi, George Kanyeihamba, Kiddu Makubuya, Freddie Ruhindi, and Byaruhanga, were no revolutionaries in any sense of the word, let alone even being progressive legal minds as Attorney Generals. With that assembly at the top, NRM should not have expected revolutionary legal reforms or reconstruction. At the head of the bench we have had Justices Allen, Wako Wambuzi of the 1970s, Benjamin Odoki, Bart Magunda Katurebe, and now Alfonse Chigamoy Owiny-Dollo. Imagine in the Constituent Assembly you had George Kanyeihamba, Joseph Mulenga, John Kawanga, and Sam Kutesa from the old colonial order, as the lead legal minds in the committees to frame the legal issues, with James Wambogo Wapakhabulo at the steering wheel. The legal profession, in a neocolonial setting, from teaching, training, and practice, is a reactionary and counter-revolutionary institution, feeding off the ignorance of society, and no wonder it has an apparently popular dictum, “ignorance of the law is no defence”, well-knowing it hasn’t taught law to the citizens. It now has young lawyers led by Uganda Law Society (ULS) president, Issac Ssemakadde, and his team of ’bang the table’, out of disappointment and frustration, in a reactionary posture, to shake the legal profession and judiciary to act better. Unfortunately, a colonial wigged-bench, enjoying job tenure, is likely to just sneer at the demands to be progressive, let alone revolutionary. So, as we look towards the debate in parliament, NRM Caucus must put its best foot forward to salvage an already shaky legal and political ground.

By Ofwono Opondo

01 March 2025

GAZA’S FORGOTTEN WAR AND GENOCIDE: A HUMILIATION TO ISRAEL DEFENCE FORCES

One month watching Hamas militants patrolling streets in the bombed-out narrow Gaza Strip, while handing over hostages, or dead bodies they have held for sixteen months under relentless, disproportionate and indiscriminate destruction, one cannot help imagine the humiliation of being powerful, yet helpless, that bullish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going through. Last week’s handover of three bodies, a woman and her two little children for 620 Palestinian detainees, among them also twenty-six children, smirked at the heartlessness of this conflict imposed by Israel and its western allies for eight decades now. For choosing the heavy military assault, in the heat of the moment, when calm reflection and measured steps could have been better, Israel is paying a good price. It has also been more like a game of cat and mouse, in a military and diplomatic brinkmanship, with Netanyahu’s bullish vows to finish off Hamas, regardless of the tight choke, still looking distant. The high handed Israel Defence Forces (IDF), and The Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, otherwise known as Mossad, although praised as among the best in the world, and has been conducting this most brutal, one-sided war of terror, must be reeling in agony. Mossad, with known guts, capability, determination and political willingness to go to any length after enemies of Israel, has had this conflict shutter its own hitherto invincibility. The hostage swap with thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel jails, often without trial, resembles the hasty retreat in humiliation that US soldiers suffered in defeat at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2020, after two decades of a horrendous similar one-sided war when a coalition of US, Canadian, Australian and European armies wreaked havoc. And for the record, it was the US that created, trained, funded and armed the Mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union culminating in the defeat of 1979 and then, they mutated into Taliban. US and Israel have been complicit in the destruction of Gaza, the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing there to wipe out Palestinians off their land. Donald Trump’s proposal to buy out Gaza, bizarre as it is, to become US’s 51st state, is more like his meeting with Kim Jong Un, which ended nowhere. After sixteen months of indiscriminate bombing and destruction of Gaza, Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have still failed to locate, let alone rescue a single Israel hostage. Too, the IDF has failed to wipe out the Hamas army which is their war public policy. The impotence of the IDF is exposed, now evidenced by the fact that Hamas militants still openly patrol the streets, and handing over hostages at their locations of their own choosing and timing within the narrow Gaza Strip. Hamas is reported to be still holding sixty-three hostages, with thirty six believed dead. This war has actually exposed the inability of the much-praised Israel intelligence organisations to locate where the hostages were being held. Even the huge amounts of diplomatic, military, logistical, economic and financial support that the US has given Jordan and Egypt over the years to play nice with Israel, betray and create an anti-Palestine leverage hasn’t delivered the desired victory. The brutal, and sustained efforts to expel Palestinians from their homeland and ongoing threats to forcibly deport them after the genocide and ethnic cleansing to other countries like Jordan and Egypt, to distant lands Trump may be so geographically, economically, topographically and demographically ignorant about, offend common sense and every international, and must be rejected. With Trump’s musings to take over Greenland, Mexico, Canada, Panama, and now the Gaza Strip by purchase or force, he is probably being as honest as a thug in a grocery shop, and a true face of ugly, greedy, and vicious American empire. The only country that may not denounce this idiocy will be Israel, while Europeans coil their tails.

By Ofwono Opondo

22 February 2025

DONALD TRUMP'S DISORDER; LEAVES EUROPEAN LEADERS IN DISARRAY

Moves by President Donald Trump and his top officials in the last few days seeking a possible Russia and Ukraine peace deal, has exposed the leaders of little European governments, leaving them in disarray. According to American officials, the Europeans won’t be welcomed at the negotiation table as yet, because, as the old adage goes, ‘many cooks spoil the broth,’ and the descendants of slave trade and colonialism are now struggling for a role, however minor. Hardly a month into office, Trump’s contours of “America First”, is threatening to isolate Europe. Unlike his first term, when he surrounded himself with four-star military Generals, Mark Milley, Jim Mattis, John Kelly, and hawkish John Bolton, who fell-out fast, this time, Trump brought JD Vance (Vice President), Pete Hegseth (Defence Secretary), Mike Waltz (National Security Advisor), and Tulsi Gabbard (Director National Intelligence) all junior veterans with grievances from Afghan and Iraq, debacles of unwanted adventures. For now, at least, they are bidding Trump’s wishes, however wild, without asking unnecessary questions which could slow him down. His withdrawal from WHO, Paris Climate Accord, UN Human Rights Council, closure of USAID, snubbing LGBT, telephone call with Vladimir Putin, and the empty bravado to ‘buy’ Gaza, and cast three million Palestinians to the wildness have left European leaders scrambling for a meaningful response, and he is not done yet. The nosy brits, of the old collapsed empire, now in self-inflicted agony of Brexit, are pitifully out of place on the world stage. As perennial instigators, meddlers and beneficiaries in world colonialism, occupation, unending conflicts and exploitation, European leaders even from little countries, driven by superficial understanding of trends, seem unable to realise their diminishing roles in the world. Pete Hegseth, and Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellog, both admonished European leaders at NATO and Munich security meetings last week rubbing sour tastes in their mouth over Ukraine’s unlikely NATO membership, recovery of pre-2014 border, and non-deployment of US troops in Ukraine. That stance prompted France’s Emmanuel Macron to convene an ‘‘informal” meeting of scared European leaders. And imagine, a very desperate and weather-beaten Ukrainian president, Vlodomyr Zelensky, reminding Europeans that they must learn to stand by themselves, and not always look to Uncle Sam, their benefactor-world policeman, for their security. JD Vance threw a spanner in the works with a reprimand that the threat to Europe’s security was “from within,” and not “China or Russia,” and highlighted the deficiencies in Europe’s internal democracy. Trump’s policy of turning the Cuban territory, Guantanamo Bay, into an open-air prison for illegal migrants awaiting deportation back to their miserable countries of origin is a good one because they should no longer lecture anyone on human rights issues without being told to clean up their own dirty backside. Some Uganda elites think that Uganda cannot do without US funding, important as it may be, yet Uganda is already doing so. The only caveat is that we must be serious with setting our priorities and implementing frugality, after all, Kale Kayihura, and Anita Among, both sanctioned, seem better off and even unbothered. Otherwise, many people should be enjoying Trump’s cowboy, Rambo and 007 James Bond style as he runs Great America to a laughing stock, and probably self-destruction before our own eyes that many never expected, although necessary. On our side of the planet, the false giant, called the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under President Felix Tshekedi seems to be in a free fall right now. The light weight of M23 rebels is seizing territory after territory before a hapless EAC, SADC, African Union, and MUNSCO, possibly waiting for rescue from an impotent UN Security Council, bidding US interests. Meanwhile, the overdrive propaganda of blackmail on government, to ‘unconditionally free’ Kizza Besigye, who was nabbed plotting to assassinate President Yoweri Museveni and smash military facilities, isn’t bearing much fruit.

By Ofwono Opondo

15 February 2025

NRM REVOLUTION; A 360-DEGREE TURN DOWN MEMORY LANE

Towards the end of January 1986, depending on your location at the time, the NRA/M armed rebels, but in former president Milton Obote’s words, “bandits and gangsters,” stormed state power structure taking over government in Kampala, climaxed by the swearing-in of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as president of Uganda. Location mattered because the people of the immediate Luwero Triangle, NRA/M, were already part of their lives by mid-1983. For Toro, Kasese, Ankole, Kigezi and Masaka it was after the 27, August 1985 military coup of an illiterate junta led by Gen. Tito Okello Lutwa military, when NRA/M declared self-governance in the areas it occupied and took control, even collecting taxes. When, as young university students, we were taken to the makeshift, grass-thatched, school of political education first in Wakiso, then transferred to present-day Kyankwanzi in 1987, to be detoxified from reactionary, and in Lt. Col. Kizza Besigye’s terminology “obscurantist,” ideas. Yet in old DP and UPC classification, it was to be “brain-washed” into regressive communist ideology”. Maj. Nuwe Amanya Mushega (Deputy Minister of Defence), Col. Kahinda, Otafiire (Internal Affairs), Besigye (NPC), and NRA political commissars Capt. Kale Kayihura, Lt. Col. Serwanga Lwanga, Maj. Ondoga ori Amaza, Maj. Kakooza Mutale, and Lt. Noble Mayombo led the assault on ideology which left an everlasting mark on many of us to-date. Apart from political mobilisation, our major task was to distribute scarce and rationed ‘essential commodities’ of sugar, salt, soap, soda and beers to Makerere university community. We were taught that the love for soft life, amassing property, wealth, and engaging in trade and businesses were reactionary, and therefore counter-revolution. Now, distinguish ‘amassing’, from creating wealth. But in the few urban areas especially Kampala and Jinja, our new comrades were taking over, sometimes forcefully, residential buildings formerly occupied by state officials of the recently-gone by governments of Idi Amin, UPC and Lutwa’s military junta which had so swiftly and violently changed hands. To rationalize, soon (1991-93), government pool houses except for army, police and prisons, then so dilapidated, saddled with huge and unsustainable utility bills were offered to government employees who were the sitting tenants, but most without the money to buy them. Top civil servants like permanent secretaries, directors, commissioners and ranks below them took over multiple estates for a song at prices of their choosing, determination, mode and duration of payment because they were the ones who knew the location and physical state. The new revolutionary soldier-officers in town mostly took up upper-scale leafy Kololo, Nakasero, Luzira and Bugolobi areas. A junior officer, but with a senior officer relative or from their village, took up property in Kololo, the much-coveted place. Those properties have since changed hands on a commercial basis because the new owner-village boys couldn’t measure up to high urban life. So, don’t be surprised if you see some of them or their families still living in these places, and not in Nalya, Najjera, Bulindo or Namugongo which were still then forest thickets. While change of ownerships, and new acquisitions were underway, many of us, especially serving in the army, intelligence and political ideological schools were told it was reactionary to acquire property and wealth. But in any case, we would not even know what was available for the taking since they were not put up on public advert. Kampala only covered Kololo, Nakasero, Makerere, Mengo, Namirembe, Lubaga, Mulago, and Kibuli hills. With hindsight, if they had put to the public offer, the NRM revolution wouldn’t have traveled this far. They were clever but selfish. At work, apart from knowing each other’s name and area of study, we did not ask for origin, tribe, or religion because they were neither needed nor relevant for the tasks at hand. Today, we are here asking everyone to engage in production and productivity with calculation for profitability.

By Ofwono Opondo

08 February 2025

UPDF, KIZZA BESIGYE AND THE KILLING OF THE GENERAL COURT MARTIAL; THE UNSAID

Few, within NRM and government, will say or admit publicly even when they know, because, increasingly, they must look over their shoulders. But, the bad joke, delivered through dark humour, a few weeks ago, to ‘hang’ Kizza Besigye, at a tree in Gulu on Heroes Day, later brought forward to May, when he is still facing a controversial and disputed trial in the Military Court Martial, possibly created a sharp chill, that no one of sound mind, let alone Supreme Court Justices, to ‘kill’ the military court based at Makindye. Threatening to behead, Kabobi, by an emerging military bully, could have been the icing on the cake, that intimidated the quorum of seven colonial wigged Justices, earlier on written off as ‘cadre judges’ to write the spicy indictment. Many people, especially critics of President Yoweri Museveni, and NRM are enjoying a giggly feeling, after a rather unexplained long silence, belatedly delivered last Friday under political pressure, handed them some cooling effect for the weekend. President Museveni’s public displeasure to the Supreme Court ruling, to which he is entitled, came fast and sharp, although no one should make mountains of it, because, knowing him, he will abide by the decision. In any case this is not the first time he has diced court rulings, because sometimes their reactionary nature doesn't speak to his revolutionary ideals. To be fair, the same courts have in the past delivered heavy penalties in high profile robbery, murder and terrorism cases, or as in the ongoing trial of Jamil Mukulu, a terrorism suspect hasn’t granted him bail, hence there is no valid justification to sidestep its jurisdiction. Looking back to the many previous botched up trials at the court martial, accompanied by extremely bad publicity they generated for the UPDF, government and Uganda, many had thought we had learnt lessons, but alas. The embarrassments aside, in the long course of building a revolution, democracy and a new society, elements within NRM and Uganda have proved in pushbacks that they can stand up for what is right, common sense and just. From now on, the political charade, often instigated, generated and sustained by internal incompetence, driven by a sense of self-entitlement needs to be checked, otherwise the good deeds of NRM could end in smoke because no human being has the capacity to determine or control the entire journey to eternal destiny. Of course, there were valid legal, constitutional, political and democracy arguments to halt the Court Martial’s evidently emboldened excesses, exhibited with sprawling incompetencies on multiple fronts that have played out in the public gallery particularly over the last three months in the Besigye and Obed Lutale Kamulegeya drama. That comedy of extreme absurdities left many in NRM, government and UPDF embarrassed although they will not step forward. And truly, it has been very hard and agonizing distinguishing a learned lawyer from the UPDF prosecution side and lay people on the court’s bench. And maybe, going forward, the UPDF needs to improve by having written regulations on basic skills in etiquette and public speaking, otherwise its team will continue to get cooked on the public rostrum. . The poetic flourish by Chief Justice Alfonse Chigamoy Owiny-Dollo, and advice for all to go read “A Man For All Seasons”, and Catherine Bamugemereire’s step into military histories of fallen empires, were good anecdotes to be ignored. In this media sphere, the written and spoken words are, our sword, bayonet, and gun, similar to weapons active duty UPDF soldiers use in the wars to defend the just causes of Uganda, and we should not be held at fault. Patriots and men of good conscience should stand up to expand the frontiers of democracy that the NRM brought back thirty-nines years ago.

By Ofwono Opondo

01 February 2025

MINISTER AMOS LUGOLOOBI; PLEASE MAN UP, CARRY YOUR OWN CROSS

Various media outlets this week carried State Minister for Finance in charge of Planning, Amos Lugoloobi’s foul cry that his colleagues, Matia Kasaija, and Henry Musasizi at the finance ministry, and others who reportedly also irregularly benefitted from the Karamoja iron-sheets bonanza in 2022 are not being prosecuted in the courts of law. While Lugoloobi’s frustration, even bitterness is understandable, many think that he has been treated fairly, after all, he is still on the ministerial bench and payroll on a public purse that enables him to pay some of his legal costs. Ugandans are now used to accused persons, their relatives and friends crying foul that they are being targeted in witch-hunt every time, would be accomplices go scot-free, as was the case in Global Fund and Gavi under the health ministry a decade ago, Chandi Jamwa in the NSSF scam, and Gilbert Bukenya, the former Vice President, now senior presidential advisor on Environment. Mary Goretti Kitutu and Agnes Nandutu, formerly of the Karamoja docket, may actually be envious or silently smattering in suppressed anger, that while they were shown the cabinet exit door and perks removed, you, Lugoloobi, has been to-date been retained on the frontbench. And imagine what the civil servants serving under you are thinking because when they err, get caught, and charged in a court of law, interdiction is automatic and prompt. Well, two different laws, for elected MPs, and another for the civil servants, for the same offence, and which ought to be changed. So, Amos Lugoloobi, don’t cry loudly because there is always a black sheep in the flock, and as the old adage goes, “every dog has its own day”. See, in parliament, recently, only the fivesome of Michael Maranga Mawanda, Cissy Namujju, Yusuf Mutembuli, Paul Akamba, and Ignatius Mudimi were caught in a web of alleged corruption in war compensation for the defunct Co-operative Unions. Others were in dubious dealings, and attempts to extort from the chairperson of the Human Rights Commission (UHRC) Marriam Wangadya, yet many MPs are rumoured to be in the habit of accosting government Accounting Officers for money. And likewise, only Geoffrey Kazinda, Christopher Obey, Oloka Apila, Stephen Mukasa Nkusa, and then Permanent Secretary Jimmy Lwamafa were got in the 2010 in the Office of the Prime Minister, and Pension scams in the Public Service Ministry respectively. 88.2bn Nkusa, Obey, and Apila have been called by God while their colleagues are still enjoying things of the earthly world, and we have no means of knowing if the dead are unhappy that only they were treated unfairly. Obey died as Inmate NO.MBP 3705/18 on 2 July 2021 at Mulago hospital where Luzira prison authorities where he was serving a 24-year sentence had taken him. Nkusa, Obey, and Apila have since been called by God while their colleagues are still enjoying things of the earthly world, and there is no means of knowing if the dead are unhappy that only they could have been treated unfairly. Recently too, only Mathias Mpuuga, the MP for Nyendo-Mukungwe and former Leader of Opposition Parliament (LoP) is paying the political price for the 500m service award by parliament, although all the five commissioners received the backhand payment. His party, the National Unity Platform has ejected him from its ranks and now in the wilderness, although he does not, as yet, see it that way. Most current, Geraldine Ssali, the now disgraced former Permanent Secretary at the ministry of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives was arrested, and is being prosecuted for the scam involving the some of the foursome MPs above. The former PS ministry of Agriculture, although caught, his case was handled quietly, got dismissed, and is now, through the Inspectorate of Government, been compelled to back the money he had stolen.

By Ofwono Opondo

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