07 June 2016

Why new Cabinet must differ from Sunday Monitor list


In Summary



Demoralised public officials have neglected their responsibilities. Corrupt people have captured resources that belong to the public and use them for their personal gain. The predatory class seems bent on retaining what they have captured.






With a distinctly journalistic flavour, Sunday Monitor of June 5 published a credible story of Ugandans who would make the cut for an ideal cabinet. Admittedly, the people on that list have the potential to make us give a clear affirmative answer to the question the headline raised: “Is this the Cabinet that would deliver?”






However, potential alone doesn’t cut it. Reality does. It is good the paper was honest enough to note: “Dr Kizza Besigye and Mr Museveni in the same Cabinet is a daydream.”
Reality rests prominently in the winner-takes-all rules of our elections. President Museveni was on February 20 declared the winner. Behind his triumph, there were ideological cadres, suave mobilisers, trusted confidants, close aides, zealous supporters, party bankrollers, relatives and many others.






Those are the people queuing for just deserts, including juicy cabinet slots. Justice, these people expect, is done when they receive back by way of reward an equivalent to the contribution they made to win the elections. That’s why some may see the Sunday Monitor list as great nonsense.
I can’t argue with that. That’s reality. The problem, though, is that political appointees can have ways of interfering with the work of technocrats at line ministries. By heeding “orders from above” they frustrate some line people responsible for achieving the technical goals of policies.






I believe that we have resourceful technocrats. I began to interview some of them in mid 1999 when I joined The New Vision as a business reporter. Shortly after, Uganda became the first to benefit from the Highly Indebted Poor Countries debt write-off by multilateral creditors. A source told me that technocrats at the Finance ministry had produced the best plan in the world for channelling savings from the debt waiver to poverty eradication and other social services.
Our problem is lousy implementation of policies and laws. I have in mind the half-heartedly implemented Decentralisation Policy of 1992 and the Local Governments Act of 1997 that operationalised it. Robust implementation of these instruments would have given us better chances of handling many of the poverty problems our people face, especially in rural areas, because local leaders know best what is happening in their localities.






Also, the involvement and participation of citizens in many aspects of development would have been better realised through decentralisation. Resource distribution or redistribution would further be a good basis for decentralised governance as “people from up there to down there” would feel good that they know what is happening to development resources. Also, issues of equality and equity would be better addressed if social planning involved communities.
Indeed, several studies show that when people have a hand in planning and decision-making, they feel that the plan being implemented is theirs and, therefore, they’ll strive to make it work. Sadly, the people who keep telling us that Uganda is on the verge of becoming a middle income nation are ignoring this fact. Yet their pronouncements seem to be based on the tendency to count chicken before they hatch.






Will oil lift us to middle income status by 2020? Not an easy question to answer. Demoralised public officials have neglected their responsibilities. Corrupt people have captured resources that belong to the public and use them for their personal gain. The predatory class seems bent on retaining what they have captured. So what’s to stop them from capturing our oil wealth?
Inevitably, the next Cabinet line-up must differ much from Sunday Monitor’s wish list because of the political calculations that exert so much pressure on President Museveni’s decisions.
Okodan is a lecturer at Kampala International University.






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