A common joke about our roads in Uganda goes like this: If
you see someone driving zigzag, then you know he is sober; and if you see
someone driving straight, they must be drunk. Why is the logic of driving
inverted? Because we have too many potholes on our roads, you drive zigzag to
avoid them. But a person high on alcohol would not recognise this problem.
This inversion of logic applies to our political system and
the accountability in our institutions as well. Take government procurement for
example. If a tender was given out by following all the rules and procedures,
then you know it involved a lot of corruption. But if those awarding the tender
violated all the procedures, it means there was little corruption.
The deal with no corruption will attract media scrutiny yet
the one with high levels of kickbacks will not. Why?
Reporters and editors in Uganda assume, quite wrongly, that
a protracted process of competitive bidding where all rules and procedures are
respected means the deal was clean. Yet it only shows that the Ugandan
political and bureaucratic class has learnt how to circumvent the myriad
procedural rules donors have imposed on our procurement system. Journalists and
the general public take this naive view because our understanding of our
political system is not informed by our reality. Rather it is informed by
analogies from Western democracies.
For example, competitive bidding in the developed world is
meant to ensure that the tendering process produces the most optimal outcome
financially and technically. The system works well because Western institutions
are built on merit and they offer long term career rewards to employees. Ones
material advancement is a result of pursuit of collective goals. These
incentives work because they are rooted in traditions these societies developed
over many years.
The Ugandan political system, on the other hand, is built
around a neo-patrimonial logic. The term neo-patrimonial is drawn from Max
Webers concept of “patrimonial rule. Weber was referring to governance in
small principalities in pre-industrial Europe where rule was highly
personalised and arbitrary. Political scientists working on Africa coined the
term neo-patrimonial to explain the combination of formal structures of a
modern bureaucratic state and the highly personalised rule we see: a
presidential statement carries more weight than official policy.
Thus recruitment into most of the public sector is not based
on merit but on political or ethnic connection. Consequently, the reward system
is not based on performance but personal or ethnic loyalty. Ones career (for
prestige) and salary (material reward) are not determined by how best they do
their job. If this exists, it is the exception, not the rule. Lacking a performance-based
reward system, most public servants in Uganda realise that the best they can
get from their jobs is money, hence corruption.
Now let us introduce a competitive bidding process into this
system. Let us also add the myriad institutions created to check corruption:
Public Procurement and Disposable of Assets Authority (PPDA), Inspector General
of Government (IGG) and parliament. Rather than check corruption, they are the
instruments for accentuating it. How?
Whenever there is a lucrative tender in a ministry,
tendering companies hire as front men people with close contacts at State House
and who can leverage the presidents name. Some are the presidents relatives and
or immediate family. The contract committee members know that their jobs would
be jeopardised if they do not cooperate; that is the stick. The carrot is that
by siding with the company fronted by the presidents men, they can get a
kickback in return and a possible promotion.
The second stage is PPDA. The top people there were
appointed politically and so are many members of staff. Like the contracts
committee in the ministry, PPDA is unlikely to act independently. Threats are
not enough to get a deal; a disgruntled staff can leak the details to the
press. The investor will also oil the pockets of key people at PPDA.
So everyone in the food chain will have eaten as it were and
therefore sworn to silence. The press will not get the exclusive. It is when
the one awarding the tender eats alone (which may mean there were not enough
bribes to bring everyone on board) that the scandal gets exposed and battles
begin. Yet in financial terms, it is the scandals that get exposed that are
actually better for the citizen.
But let us assume that the bidder who lost out goes to the
Inspector General of Government (IGG) to complain. This will only shift the
contest and with it the resources to that office. Bidders will spend heavily to
influence the IGG decision. These battles take a lot of time and money out of
the investors and therefore increase the contract price. To break the impasse,
sometimes people appeal directly to President Yoweri Museveni who acts as the
final arbiter in such squabbles.
Given the distribution of power in Uganda, those who lose
fairly or unfairly in a tendering process can petition parliament. Our
parliamentarians, fresh from the campaign trail; broke and indebted will be
looking for ways to re-coup their investment. They will take up the issue not
so much to enforce accountability but rather to leverage their constitutional
power to extort resources from the squabbling bidders.
When a tendering process gets here, all sides will seek to
influence public opinion by exposing the scandal in the press. Reporters and
editors in Uganda get recruited into these fights not so much because of
bribery (even though that may play a role) but largely because they
misunderstand the nature of the contest. Journalists address the problem as if
the institutions in Uganda work like those in Sweden.
Just assume the government of Uganda put prime lands like
Shimoni, Nakasero and Kitante Courts up for competitive bidding! The resulting
fights would easily paralyse the state or even break up the First Family.
In such circumstances, the personalised way in which
Museveni awarded them was the most efficient, however morally repugnant it was.
It has high long term costs on Ugandas institutional growth. But the inverted
logic like the drunkard who drives straight holds.
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