As cunning and entrepreneurship go, Mr Franklyn Babibasa was coasting along until a week ago when the police dropped in. Mr Babibasa is the subject of a Daily Monitor story that ran a few days ago under the headline: “Man cons MPs over Cabinet jobs.”
For Shillings between one and five million, Mr Babibasa allegedly promised MPs he would sex up reports on background checks he had done on them so as to guarantee appointment as minister. He reportedly passed himself off as Brig Ronnie Balya, the head of the Internal Security Organisation, on assignment by President Museveni.
On the face of it, this is a story about a con man and gullible politicians. Good on them. Except it is quite telling.
That up to six MPs could actually pay up suggests Mr Babibasa, still a suspect in police custody, was tapping into an existing practice. It lends credence to talk that comes up before President Museveni names his ministers. Talk that always revolves around how those controlling the list of potential ministers, before submission of a clean version to the President, are manipulating it for selfish ends — removing this name, adding the other name. Maybe this explains the poor quality of some of the individuals that show up as ministers.
Mr Babibasa’s ingenuity was to target MPs with a high chance to be named to Cabinet. Indeed, one got the job and reportedly thanked Mr Babibasa for his fantastic efforts. It is possible Mr Babibasa had access to the list, or some iteration of it.
And, of course, the whole thing may not have come to light if some of the fools who parted with their money had got the jobs. They would probably never have known whether the job came as a result of the pay or not.
With this mentality, one can see MPs pocketing bribes to pass laws and make other interventions that favour the bribers, not Ugandans.
And in the age of al-Shabaab, the thought that security reports could be doctored is scary — if a security officer can doctor a personnel report, he or she can doctor any type of report.
Again, rumours have always done the rounds that you can get your hands on any intelligence/security brief in Kampala if you name the right price.
The flourishing of corruption may be good for some of the politico-security and business elites, but it ruins a society insidiously. The last couple of years provided a clear indication that some government officials who represent Uganda in certain tough negotiations do pass on the country’s strategy briefs to the “enemy” in return for briefcases of dollars, euros, pounds, yuans, yens, pesos.
They don’t do shillings. The consequence has been cascades of terrible contracts signed, leading to loss of money and little benefit to Ugandans. These chaps are never charged with treason. For doing legitimate politics, Dr Kizza Besigye gets locked away as a worse traitor.
Away from this depressing stuff, the same edition of the Daily Monitor carried a story about a different type of Ugandan. Dr Robert Mwanga, a sweet potato breeder and head of the International Potato Centre in Uganda, is one of four scientists around the world to win this year’s World Food Prize, the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture.
A PhD in plant breeding and genetics, Mwanga is known for research that turned the white-fleshed sweet potato (with low or no Vitamin A content) to the more nutritious orange-fleshed one. The man’s potato is now eaten with relish in east and central Africa, helping little children gain the much needed Vitamin A, whose deficiency can cause death.
He will share $250,000 (Shs850 million) with his co-winners. The winners were lauded for proving that “science matters, and that when matched with dedication, it can change people’s lives”.
If only the same could be said of politics in Uganda.
Mr Tabaire is the co-founder and director of programmes at African Centre for Media Excellence in Kampala.
bernard.tabaire@gmail.com
Twitter:@btabaire
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