Over the
last few months, it has been exposed that officials in the office of the
prime minister and in the ministry of public service stole over Shs 600
billion (US$ 250m). Our country has bad roads, 26 mothers die in child
birth per day, 80,000 kids die every year from preventable diseases (in
ten years you have a number equal to the Rwanda genocide of 1994),
children study under mango trees for lack of classrooms, limited
agricultural extension services and supply of electricity is only to
eight percent of our people. Therefore Uganda needs every coin of public
funds to serve its citizens. However, this collective vision has been
lost. Instead, we see a pattern of actions where the interests of the
many have been usurped by the greed of a few.
Hence,
official loot becomes the glue that holds together NRM’s multi ethnic
and multi religious coalition. Otherwise, how would one keep such
diverse men as Kahinda Otafiire, Gilbert Bukenya and Amama Mbabazi under
the same roof? Remove corruption and the system could crack. Rather
than see it as a criminal act by individuals seeking material
self-aggrandizement, my view has been to see corruption as a social
institution through which political power is organised, distributed,
exercised and reproduced.
From this
perspective, one can understand that allegations of corruption against
powerful politicians and their auxiliaries fit this instrumentalist
view. However, corruption in Uganda also involves “small people”: the
nurse at a local clinic who sells to her patients drugs that are meant
to be free; to a head teacher at a rural primary school who pockets the
capitation grant; the traffic police constable on the street who lets an
offender go free in exchange for kitu kidogo i.e. a bribe; the agricultural extension worker who does not show up for his job but earns a salary.
How does
NRM politically gain from such small-scale yet widespread corruption?
Besides, this has the most detrimental effects on public service
delivery. There is a saying that a fish begins rotting from the head.
Once you have the top creaking with corruption, it infects the entire
body politic. This is theoretically convincing but empirically not
always true. I have read many studies of corruption in high places in
Italy, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan that make ours look like
chicken feed. However, elites in these countries, while corrupt at the
top, tend to discipline small public sector functionaries.Thus, in spite
of corruption, work gets done.
In
Uganda’s case, it is obvious that NRM also suffers the costs of
corruption. For instance, its national and international reputation is
badly tainted. During the last election campaigns, the failure of public
services was an important part of Kizza Besigye’s platform. Even in
rural areas where I covered Besigye and President Yoweri Museveni’s
rallies, Museveni was accosted with complaints of failures in public
service delivery. Each time he tried to name his achievements in service
delivery he would be booed by his supporters. He therefore adopted a
strategy of deflecting blame from himself to local government
functionaries. It worked but for how long?
Therefore,
even if NRM may benefit from corruption, it also suffers its costs.
Many people harmed by corruption are its supporters. Perhaps NRM does a
cost-benefit analysis and finds that it gains more than it loses through
corruption. But this also means it is not always a beneficiary of every
act of corruption. For example, how does NRM benefit when people like
Godfrey Kazinda, David Oloka and Christopher Obey steal billions?
Surely, NRM should have a vested interest in fighting certain forms of
corruption.
Why then
is the political will missing? Perhaps it is not just political will but
actual capacity to take on the thieves. Assuming this government (or
any other newly elected government) decided to fight corruption. Would
it change the current trajectory? To fight the corrupt, government would
have to rely on existing institutions and manpower – the police, the
Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the Inspectorate of Government
and the judiciary. But with thieves commanding billions, how many
officials from these institutions can resist the temptation of Shs 100m
delivered at their doorstep? Besides, the existing legal regime favors
the corrupt.
For
example, having stolen over shs 400 billion through ghost pensions, Obey
and Oloka were taken to police and given bond. Now they are free on the
streets and it is their legal right to be. Does anyone think that they
are out on the streets waiting for their day in court? Is it possible
that they could be busy trying to use their billions to influence police
investigations, to buy off state attorneys in the DPP’s office, using
their allies to hide evidence, sell off their properties and send their
monies to numbered accounts abroad?
Should we
be surprised that in spite of mountains of evidence, the DPP has not yet
preferred any charges against them – two months later? The choice
facing any government official trying to nail them is overnight riches
(because they can pay handsomely) or the thankless job of fighting a
lost cause i.e. serving a government that pays them peanuts. The state
cannot compete with the thieves in bribing its own officials to be more
committed to the public good.
Corruption
has become too deeply entrenched that fighting it may require a
combination of political will backed by the arbitrary use of power – a
willingness to be ruthless. It seems to me that any leader willing to
take on this monster would have to disregard due process, run rough shod
over peoples’ legal rights and use extra legal means to bring social
justice. That may be necessary, but is it desirable?
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