The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Why leaders of poor countries are not as cruel and selfish as Western media portray them
In a moment of madness, I toyed with the idea of running for president of Uganda. I had the hubris to imagine I am the guy who can solve its myriad problems because President Yoweri Museveni is incompetent and his perennial challenger, Dr. Kizza Besigye, is a demagogue. I sought to be scientific and drew up a budget that could provide a modest basket of public goods and services associated with a modern state – education, healthcare, agriculture extension services, clean water, electricity, roads, etc. My conclusion was depressing and – I hope – illuminating.
Without bothering the reader with too much statistical detail on wages and other capital investments, the budget I drew up using ministry of Finance and World Bank figures was modest. It totaled Shs210 trillion or $1,700 per person per year. Then something struck me: This financial year, Uganda has revenues of Shs11.3 trillion and a budget of Shs18.3 trillion i.e. $150 per person. Compare that to the U.S. federal, state and local government that will spend $20,900 per person in 2016. I know that Ugandans often like to compare their government’s performance with that of the U.S. But how can Uganda govern itself like the USA on such a small budget?
Perhaps a better approach would be to ask how America governed herself when it had public expenditure of $150 per person per year. I searched for this and found it was in the year 1860. America had a population of 31 million people and a public expenditure of $178 million. When adjusted to inflation, it comes to $4.93 billion or $159 per person in 2015 dollars. I also searched the structure of US society in 1860. I found that it was 20% urban and 80% rural – exactly as Uganda today.
Looking at U.S. federal, state and local governments spending for that period, I realised the U.S. government did not spend a penny on agriculture, healthcare, education, pensions, or welfare. Were U.S. leaders ignorant of their duty to provide these public goods and services to citizens? Were they corrupt, cruel or insensitive to the welfare of citizens? There was cruelty in America e.g. slavery. Yet I am inclined to believe the main reason was affordability. Public revenues were insufficient to fund a larger basket of public goods and services.
Yet citizens of poor countries today expect governments to provide public goods and services associated with a modern state even if their revenue is miniscule to govern this way. The result is that governments spread their resources too thin leading poor supervision and hence corruption and incompetence.
Africans tend to hold their governments to standards of Western nations in spite of their vastly different social and economic structures
I tried to compare Uganda (Africa) with Western Europe. In 1820 all the nations of Western Europe had a higher per capita income than Uganda today: Belgium, $2,400 in 2015 dollars at PPP, France $2,064, the average for Western Europe was $2,187. USA was $2,340. Uganda’s per capita income at PPP in 2016 is $2,000. So I asked myself: How were they governing their people at a similar per capita income, per capita revenue/expenditure and social structure (urban-rural) as Uganda today?
None of them did so by delivering a wide range of public goods and services that we associate with a modern state. They relied on patronage, prepends, spoils-system (otherwise called corruption today) for legitimacy and on repression for compliance with their rules. Then I noticed something: all these societies had a similar social structure as Uganda (and other poor countries) today – a large non-educated peasantry, a small educated urban middleclass, and capitalist development in its infancy. Doesn’t this social structure engender a specific form of governance?
“….So the state is overdeveloped in function but underdeveloped in capacity – its reach goes far beyond its grasp…” Nearly wept.
When our politicians make promises, they are mostly sincere but fail to deliver; then lie.
Adrew, I like your entrepreneurial mind and you really try. Thank you.
I just wondered why this article stretching your search to 19th Century when you could for example work with Singapore or South Korea with comparable figures but over a shorter scope of time. Even Malaysia or Botswana. Why would you want African leaders to be more cruel? Would you be writing if you had disappeared that time when you had to shout from a car of hijackers? I think the best is to encourage a more responsive government but one which is accountable to its citizens. Poorer heads of households don’t have to be more cruel and its is not necessarily true that affluent households are in eternal merry. It is the quality of leadership, governance and government.
You didn’t get the point [ Mr. Kamanyire, Mr. Sserukeera, Mr. Ocheto, Mr. Ejakait Engoraton, Mr. Yusuf Masaba ] One solid step to move a poor state to a developed one would require; on top of a patriotic undertone, an immense decisiveness to utilize ruthlessness, mindset, and crafting a clear vision of it’s future [not based on secluded maturational templates of any other state henceforth developed] so as to create virgin atmosphere for localized and unique development torn off of it’s flesh as it were which has also been the path for the west [starting from ages ago] as well as Malaysia.
Education isn’t supposed to be crafted to overtake any other existence of thought but to pave resonance of “…atmosphere for localized and unique development …” Therefore no leader in our poor states is going to realize development if they employ subtle goals outlined in the minds of other gratified entities.
Anthony, these people you address are a parrot-education-product cadre who can only cram and reproduce; who cannot improvise or exploit their uniqueness; preferring to repeat the text-book material they were shoved into regardless of its relevance,timeframe or application. like you say all developed countries took very different paths but towards same goal and some failed along the way; while some were developed by foreigners who came and assimilated and yet others developed after their own citizens came with expertise. how is Israel manufacturing aircraft when Saudi Arabia doesn’t? the answer is …..
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This nonsensical premise is the heart of Mwenda’s argument. If he is unaware of the concept of a “functioning low income Country” then he is unqualified to write on this issue. If he is aware of that concept, and of the fact that such countries do exist, then he is merely dishonest.
the nonsensical premise I refer to above is Mwenda’s claim that the citizens of poor countries expect their governments to provide services comparable to those in rich countries. This claim is in fact the exact opposite of the truth. The citizenry do not expect world class services, they just expect decent services, such as a district hospital with clean running water, beds with mattresses, doctors and nurses on duty and basic medicines in the pharmacy. Those who expect services comparable to those in Europe fly themselves and their families out of the country for medical care, for school and even for shopping, they are not the citizenry, they are the leadership. Mr Mwenda’s recurrent theme is deflecting attention from the fact that the country has leaders who are responsible for running it; this was well exemplified by his essay on “elites” last week, conflating the nation’s leaders with journalists, private sector executives and low level officials.
What a level of desperation that Mwenda has to reach to the unfathomable depths of history to look and hunt for false parallels to justify current deplorable governance practices and misbehavior. The English used to behead their kings so therefore Africa would be justified beheading their “leaders” since the economic structures of Europe then are similar to Africa of today. Even after factoring out the current obtaining socio-economic conditions (which is not hard to do) the performance of today’s regimes would still showed to be wanting. By the way the world has progressed: there are better scientific tool (Mwenda’s favoring hide out). The current regime is and deserved to be replaced. Nice try: nobody buys it.
MWENDAS article should have been “JUSTIFICATION FOR FAILURE”.Some things are not a function of the other in an equation and in mathematics we call this “using linear data in a non linear equation.”There is absolutely NOTHING in this article that is worth anything in terms of “comparative analysis.” HOW for instance does $150 in 1860 equate to $159 in 2016.Countries , just like individuals go through different stages in different ways.At what stage in their development did the developed countries have(get) cars, phones, etc.The car, phone etc came on the scene maybe 100 or more years down the line , yet in developing countries it is at a much earlier stage.Our president has a presidential jet yet some of the developed countries do not.When it comes to providing basic services we invoke the “underdeveloped card” yet we want to have the same voting rights in the UN and other international bodies.
MORE than 30 years ago I met a Minister of Education from the Emirates who was in London to do a course.We got friendly and I asked him what he was in the UK for.He told me had come to study the education system so that he could go back and implement it so that theirs could be better than the British. I laughed because I thought to myself, not as good or nearly as good , but BETTER. A few years my friend (rip) told me he had got a job with the Emirates as driver and he told me how these people owned half of the UK with vast estates and he drove people from place to place and they had a fleet of more than 500 of the top of the range Mercedes and BMW.A little later I met up with him and asked him how his Arabs were doing and in his words he said “obusajja buntamye. They complain about everything, how the cars are not comfortable enough, how the air conditioning in the hotel is not good enough and how the roads are too bumpy!!!!!!!!”.My mind went back to the 30 years ago and what the Minister had told me – not as good as but BETTER. And in 30 years.
“IN A MOMENT OF MADNESS”- I would imagine that with M 9 , this is the norm rather than the exception.IT takes a MAD person to come up with 99% of the things you come up with , which in itself is an indication that you are 99% of the time MAD. Which is not a crime under normal circumstances but in your case I think it wanders into the territory of “CRIMINAL INSANITY”.
To have the “hubris to imagine you are the guy to solve Ugandas myriad of problems” is not far fetched though because believe me there are many people , including probably even your dog, who are capable of solving those problems , given the opportunity
WHY do you thrive to succeed when you have people like MWENDA who will justify your failure in flawless English and using all kinds of statistics, pie charts, graphs and all manner of power points to show and justify that the odds are stacked against you.These are people who will go to seminars and present papers on “why and how Africa has failed” but not on “why and how Africa can transform”.Even in one of his last articles on why we have not transformed it is simply because just like the buildings that are collapsing all over town, the foundation and the whole system is wrong.After 30 years , for a country that is blessed with good weather, soils, land and surrounded by a good market, we have not capitalised on agriculture and instead want to manufacture KIIRA vehicles.Our comparative advantage( being able to offer what others can not) is in agriculture(and maybe tourism) and we should have developed industries along those lines.
it is fine you are pointing out failures. what have you done?(not said) I mean YOU (ejakait). verba sine re (talk and not do) is so easy that thetax-man is reaping heavily from the mobile telecommunication users. I wish they could tax even such nonsense as this you post. we could not lose twice.
IMAGINE what the cotton industry alone could do if each person just had 1 pair of bed sheets, 1 towel, 5 shirts, 5 dresses , 5 undergarments( per year) in addition to school and army, police, prisons as well as prisoner uniforms. And then the seeds are used for cooking oil as well as animal feed.And yet we even as a people do not have two square meals a day , which means as a nation we are badly fed, therefore have less productivity and are more likely to fall ill because of bad feeding.MOI was able to develop the diary industry in Kenya by offering free milk to all school children that is why we have KENYATTA taking over our Dairy Corporation because the state helped them to build that capacity.Do we as Ugandans drink our own coffee, which would be a standard drink in our offices and before we used to have COFFEE shops in every town operated by Coffee Marketing Board.We had textile board(LABEL EA LTD) in London.
“….MOI was able to develop the diary industry in Kenya by offering free milk to all school children…..” did you see it or read about it? the milk was indeed there, it was nicknamed ‘akanyayo’ and was issued about once a term;a 200 ml brick-pack per child and some of it was damaged such that running bowels were experienced. in a place I frequented some parents had stopped their children from drinking the milk. so ejakait if this example is anything to point to most of what you spew here; you are one very unreliable information imparter who says what you don’t know and know nothing to say. this doesn’t mean you don’t act; far from that; I for example know without a doubt that you eat.
I admire the fact that you took off time to have those wild dreams of leading this nation. Indeed at one time i envisaged you leading a new crop of young, energetic, learned elites who would come and upstage the current situation and set new predicaments,but alas! Whatever is happening in Uganda is what happened in most of those European countries when their per Capita income compared favorably to ours. Refer to the ‘Radical War’ of 1820 in Scotland which was an attempt to stage an insurrection against the government in the south of Scotland. Its background was provided by a period of intense economic hardship and political activity that had followed the end of the long wars against Revolutionary and then Napoleonic France in 1815. A mass movement which explained economic distress as a result of corruption within the political system and called for radical reform of the representative system that had emerged between 1816 and 1819. If you look at the Ugandan situation, believe me you, it is what the citizenry are currently engaged in. Demand for reforms, equity in resource distribution, and of course a war against corruption.
BY insinuating that developed countries developed in spite of democracy and are trying to “impose” it on developing countries is to be absolutely idiotic.We as a society and as individuals try to be better than our ancestors and I wish for my children to be better than me in any way.My father despite being uneducated was one of the richest men of his time. So should he have encouraged us to become rich without having an education. NO. He took us to the best schools available at the time including Budo and Gayaza and sent my brother to study Engineering and me later to study Quantity Surveying in the UK and my sister to study secretarial in Nairobi.Some ( admittedly not all) of these countries wish us what is best.IF during their early stages of development they did not provide”a wide basket of public goods” is it wrong if they would want us to have clean water, medical services, good roads as well as human rights etc simply because they did not have these things.ARE we not supposed to learn from other peoples mistakes or are we supposed to go through the same mistakes.Experience is when you do the things others did right and avoid the ones they did wrongly.
THAT is why KAGAME almost had him kicked out of RWANDA because as far as M 9 was concerned PK was being a “pest” for wanting Rwanda officials to perform better when as far as M 9 was concerned they were “doing well enough”.”Well enough” is NOT GOOD ENOUGH as far as KP is concerned and he is right.
ANYTHING in life can be justified, just like anything can be criticized . I have said before that if someone does poop on the roadside, they can find all sorts of reasons to justify their actions (not that they will be right) and they will even find people who will support their actions.Likewise no matter that you do something good , you will still find people who will criticize your action.And of course there are those who are paid to justify others actions no matter how indefensible they may be.
Interesting. However, your research findings would lead me to a different conclusion. Countries of Western Europe and North America may have had similar leadership styles, social structure at the time their levels of public expenditure were comparable to our poor countries. However, was by moving away from these leadership styles and causing structural changes that they were able to capitalize on industrialization, to propel them to prosperity. We should do them same. By failing to do so, we are indulging a retrogressive status quo. If you find yourself on a wheel that is turning fast in a certain direction, it is more productive to invest your energy in making it go faster in the same direction, rather than the opposit.
In conclusion, I find myself at odds with the proposition that retrograde structural conditions should be allowed to determine strategies used to govern. Because if this is true, it amounts to letting “the tail wag the dog”. Structural weaknesses ought to be addressed, not indulged.
Mr. Mwenda has decided to use his time machine to take us back in time on a voyage that he does not believe in, and neither willing to be part of. He has decided to be selective even in his primordial mood. I will agree with some of the comments here that it would be more appropriate to compare Uganda with countries like Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and President Museveni with Lee Kuan Yew, Don Mahatir Mohammed and Park Chung Hee respectively. But such comparison would not serve today’s purpose. Today’s purpose was to show how Museveni is performing miracles in spite of structural bottlenecks. The selective nature of Mwenda’s mind denies us the fact that Uganda got its independence 3 years before Singapore but he decides to drive us back 156 years even if at the time America was facing civil war. Amazing. But why would Andrew decide to go 156 years back? The reason is simple. President Museveni is dwarfed by any performing leader or ruler even on the African continent. He only stands tall among his fellow African kleptomaniacs like Idd Amin, Mobutu Tsetseko, Nguema among others.
But if history could predict our future, then Lenin’s Russia was Museveni’s harbinger. The 1986Museveni’s inaugural speech is marked by a famous (or infamous) quote; “ours is not a mere change of guards, it’s a fundamental change.” By 1920 Lenin and the Bolsheviks had assumed that the European revolution would quickly save the Russians from the socialist contradictions that made a socialist revolution possible in a country that was not yet ready for socialism. They were wrong. The European revolution did not come and Lenin was now reduced to manoeuvring within constraints that damaged his basic purpose. This resulted into a “temporary dictatorship.” Trotsky called it “the logic of substitution”- where the party was substituted for the proletariat, the party organisation for the party, the central committee for the party organisation and finally, the leader for the Central committee.
Earlier Lenin had been more explicit. He observed that it was a petty bourgeois social- democratic illusion, to imagine that the working people are capable under capitalism, of achieving the high degree of class consciousness that will enable them to decide, merely by voting, without the long experience of struggles, that will follow a particular class or a particular party.
The Bolsheviks maintained that the workers’ revolution could not be carried out by the actual workers and peasants who were too backward to know their objectives and interests, but by the party vanguard- “the bourgeois democracy.” They had come to accept the long held view by the Marxists that democracy under capitalism was less than fully democratic. It was not that the capitalists had resisted giving the people the right to vote, or, that electoral structures were often rigged to frustrate majorities. Basically, there could never be genuine political equality so long as there was fundamental social and economical inequality. Karl Marx said that the nature of a society is determined by the process of production. To this, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea embarked on a government led industrialisation program. If this were to be more or less true, Museveni would spend acres of time to determine Uganda’s modern character than any President in our history.
Stop comparing America with uganda; economically uganda is 500yrs behind America therefore any comparison between the two is stupidit.
1.For now,Govt is doing two expensive things concurrently that is draining the economy (i) Paying workers(ii) offering free social services like Education,Security and medical services while investing in infrastructure development.What should bother us for now is;was it necessary to begin this way?of course yes and no so when we compare the revenue we generate and the services we receive bambi our money is being put to good use.Basing on Andrew’s figures of 150$ per person this means that each Ugandan is entitled to 450,000/= per year let me stress it more each Ugandan uses 37,000/= per month what can 37,000/= per month do for a man like Musinguzi with 12 children?
2.In developed nations angry and aggressive people are normally taken for anger management.A poor person is always angry i pray that you get better its feels good to be comfortable e.g during festive sessions,hotels call u to find out whether they can reserve a table for your family,Airlines give you discounts generally life is good.
3.The saga in Karuma project is bad. On graduation day i see Makerere graduating Engineers dont we have those who specialized in Structural or Hydraulics Engineering or they are studying PhD in sexuality like Dr.Nanyanzi? There are great Architects like John Sekaziga and Ssentoongo who could have drawn the plan for Karuma at a cheaper price why didn’t we involve them?Why pay an Indianan 96m per month for supervision of works at the Dam?Dams in USA were built in 1940’s when there were few engineers with obsolete technology how come they are still strong?
4. How can ug which has few factories have 4 big dams like Karuma,Bujagali,Owens,Isimba? Okay we shall sell power to Congo,S.Sudan Rwanda but i think they are too many for now & some are not so urgent hope we shall not get electrocuted.
WINNIE – you have waded in way above your weight. SEKAZIGA and SENTOOGO( not SSENTOONGO) to design the dam.That is the most daft thing I have heard this side of the CENTENARY.YES I know for a fact that Sekaziga designed the Rwakitura residence but that was on “technical know who” rather than any competence. Infact his late partner KAGIMU was the main brains behind the practice and was the one who got the bigger projects like the extension of NIC tower, the airport project and Sekaziga gets most projects because of who he is rather what he is as an architect.I worked with both of them.
SO you think to design a dam requires the same expertise as designing your toilet.No wonder the country is in a big mess.
The mess we have in all these projects is because of political interference where people who do not know anything are put to be in charge simply because of who they know.In fact it was the late KAGIMU who told me the problems they had with ISO boys who were put to be mbu”spies” on the ENTEBBE airport project and while they were doing the suspended ceiling the ISO boy stopped the whole project that “how could they use just a wire to support the ceiling” without realising that this was structural pre stressed wire which was capable of supporting the designed weight.They had to fly the idiot to NAIROBI to show him a similar mode of construction, meanwhile the Spanish contractors (DRAGADOS) were waiting.
JUST stick tu bwamalaya bwo , do not please venture into areas that you have no knowledge of.Even if SEKAZIGA designed a simple 5 storey building, all he does is to present how the building will look.He then has to take it to the structural engineer, who may even veto some of his ideas , to work out what it takes for the building to be able to stand.He then has to take it to an electrical engineer and a plumbing engineer and if it has a lift, a services engineer and if it needs to work out how much it will cost , he takes it to a quantity surveyor.
When I was at UNI , the architects used to be the laughing stock of the department and we used to say “an architect is a QS with the brain taken out”.
WINNIE -Let me just tell you as a favour so that you do not make a fool of yourself next time you are invited to be a barmaid.An architect can never ever design a hydro electric dam let alone a bridge.Drawing a picture of something is not the same as designing .
So we have too much power for our own needs.What is the take up of domestic electricity or as you say electricity is for only factories.
I must confess that the fault is mine because all along I thought I have been arguing with someone who knows something and my duty as a good parent and citizen was to correct those little faults. I have just realised though that I am involved with someone who is completely beyond redemption and the task is much bigger than I am willing or able to undertake at this point.
Andrew are you suggesting that citizens should not stick to museveni only
SSEGIRINYA ANTHONY tries to be original but totally out of context. Andrew drew parallels with USA and one can guess why. That was his audience given recent scathing comments by USA officials in UN Security Council and others within the country. That is where he lost the plot of his message and and there are people who were questioning why he stretched so much to medieval times when there modern cases if comparison was his strategy to use. Otherwise, ANTHONY be comforted that some of us believe that in the last 30 years we have made “steady progress” in certain aspects of the life of our country. We are on a trajectory and I strongly suspect we are dependent on the now OLD PATH charted in the last couple of decades. So I need to see where you fetch what appears to be your main argument “One solid step to move a poor state to a developed one would require; on top of a patriotic undertone, an immense decisiveness to utilize ruthlessness, mindset, and crafting a clear vision of it’s future [not based on secluded maturational templates of any other state henceforth developed] so as to create virgin atmosphere for localized and unique development torn off of it’s flesh as it were which has also been the path for the west [starting from ages ago] as well as Malaysia.”
KAMANYIRE – as you say M 9 drew parallels with the USA and an article in this paper about deaths caused by errors in the USA serves that same purpose.IT is as if to say “look here you guys who think things are bad in Uganda, they are just as bad in the US if not worse”.
RWABUSUTARE – just like I said before, even the INDEPENDENT is embarrassed with your articles and just publish them because may be you might put them in some safe house otherwise how do you explain why they routinely publish your articles out of sync, for an article you post on the 4th and not just one article, and is hidden away with those posted on the 3rd.
BASHINGWE always have things happening to them like that and even sitting next to one is a risk.
RWASUBUTARE – somehow I understand what the INDEPENDENT is trying to do when they put your postings out of sync and strangely enough next to my posts just to show how stupid your articles are.YES MOI gave free milk to schools and it was not once a term as you claim and at least it was something.DOES the NRM government not give out free seeds that are useless just like it gives its soldiers uniforms that do not fit let alone the hapless UPE and USE .
YOUR thick brain just does not get it, it does not mean that if I do not know a solution I can not point out something.What did those who were selling milk in KIMBO tins as a measure of half a litre point out .
While meeting ministers to congratulate them on a job well done for “nearly taking Uganda to middle income status”, MUSEVENI had this to say “Omugwerera akatweka enyanja ati ano bwoba atahire abaraguruka. (A mad man set fire to the wet grass near the lake but it did not burn properly and he said even if you have all not burnt, at least you have felt the fire),” he said, describing Uganda problems as many and that even if not all of them have been fully resolved, many have felt the pressure of NRM.
SO UGANDA has been set on fire and by a MAD man, and does it need a rocket scientist to tell who the mad man is .
A “NEAR MISS” is a miss all the same just like ” a shot off-target”is of no value.You can have as many near misses and shots off target as you want they add up to NOTHING.
I think that’s what Andrew tried to recognise, that even when one is only “thinking” of becoming Uganda’s president, it has to be “a moment of madness” as if, he has ever been sober.
1.@ Ejakait: In Dam construction,the Architect,Quantity surveyor, structural Engineer,Mechanical engineer work as a team actually building is not hard. The engineers on site just have to follow the plan given to them and if there is proper supervision on site, the issue of cracks developing should not ocur.
2. I am also 100% sure of what i write.
3. Before building a Dam,they consider natural factors like earth quakes,speed and direction of wind,type of soil and rocks etc this is even known by kids.
4. Take it or leave it;Sekaziga and Sentoogo are a brand name in Architecture and Design Business they made their name long before M7 came to power so what ever you r insinuating is nonsense.
5.What is the difference between the services your wife offers and that of a malaaya?
2.
The cost of public goods , delivering and maintaining them is so low today compared to the nineteenth century that the affordability argument just falls apart . Rwanda has actually proved that the policy environment and efficient systems of collective action influence delivery of public goods more than revenue and affordability. You are comparing conditions of delivering a wheel at the time the wheel was invented to the conditions of delivering a wheel when we are driving cars. The delivery of basic healthcare and education is more a problem of policy, innovation and political will than it is a money one!
@Maceni: R u suggesting that coz of modern technology (which as u claim has eliminated the affordability argument) a country that spends $20,900 per person per year and another that spends $150 (0.72%) would have similar public goods and services? If that is true, can u identify one country in the entire world with such low levels of spending and such high levels of service delivery? I can see u say Cuba but that would be only in health while other services are literary dead. Rwanda has put in all the effort one can imagine but it’s not fundamentally different from ug, and I evolves this argument upon seeing the limits of will and anti corruption. Look at health care outcomes of ug and Rw. Note Rw represents the best management possible for a poor country. It has will, it has fought corruption, it was a dedicated leadership etc. But it is not Singapore. It’s per capita income grows better than other nations of Africa but not fundamentally so. It’s not 20 times faster. I’ve looked at km of tarmac road, health and education outcomes and I see it performing better but not fundamentally. Why?
Just make it simple: Rwanda is a third world country like any other, the hype noywithstanding.
WINNIE – you have not only gone in at the deep end, but have fallen in “quick sand” – the harder you fight to free yourself, the faster you sink.Let me say this without fear of any contradiction what so ever that an ARCHITECT will NEVER NEVER ever be involved in a hydro electric dam project let alone a dam .What you are suggesting is like you as an expert on cars suggesting that a car designer designs an aero plane or a ship.
SO to you the services your mother provided(provides) to your father are the same as what the prostitutes provide.YOU are the expert on this but if that is what you think no doubt you are made to serve the wine.
I just wonder sometimes how M 9s mind works and one can get a snippet from his response here , mistakes notwithstanding. Most times it is difficult to make a comparative study of different situations because of the “universal provision” – CETERIS PARIBUS – all things being equal, because they can never be, but this is made even more difficult when you try to make the comparison over a large time frame – 1860 and 2016.NOBODY in their sane mind( I realise for M 9 it was a moment of madness and rightly so) would expect any country or individual to get the same services from different financial inputs – but the issue is MAXIMISATION.
M 7 at every opportunity he gets trumpets how he has grown revenue collections over the period post 86 to what end.He loves and advocates for a large population so why can he not plan and provide for that big population – because he can not claim ( or M 9 claiming on his behalf) that poor services are because of a large population.You can not have it both ways.
I have argued before that the provision of services just like performance is mostly a question of WILL rather than the MEANS.”SIZE does not matter”, it is how you use what you have got.IN our case , the will is not there, and like I said before, M 7 looks at the provision of services as a favour and also as an investment in terms of what it will benefit him and his system rather what it benefits the population.This is where issues like corruption( which even by conservative estimates accounts for more than 10%), wastage, poor planning etc.
Looking at the health situation alone, how much would the amount of money spent on treatments abroad($100-150m pa) do if it was injected directly into the system.WE are not asking for a perfect system, because none exists anywhere, but all most people are saying is that under the circumstances we should be able to do better.
In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias is a tendency to search for and interpret very good data and information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions, assumptions, and desired outcomes leading to factually accurate information but wrong conclusions. If you want to observe a perfect example of this, look at Mwenda’s body of work and the recurrent themes and positions he takes. From criticizing M7 in the past, to Praise and Defense of Kagame, blaming the “elites”, to now making excuses for NRMs regime corruption. Those subjects that he dedicates more than 20 articles to.. you will see that Mwenda is only convincing himself to believe his research.
IMBIBE- I would be happy if I knew that M 9 himself believes in the things he says.Because then you can not blame someone for their convictions or their mental state, but in this case I doubt that he believes the things that he says.Either that or that just like the hapless WINNIE , he too does not half understand what he is trying to put across.Just do not know which is the lesser evil
the “don’t know evil” is a lesser evil than “I know that I know evil.” According to my “psychosis.”
1.I find Jacob Oulanya a better candidate for speaker of parliament coz he is more conversant with the law and articulate the bad thing is that we r not comfortable with his traces and sprinkles of UPC
2. Kadaga seems to have Sekandi as her role model according to her,her main reason for seeking another term as speaker is coz Sekandi served for 10 years its like she has some unfinished business with Sekandi. it would have been better if Kadaga is appointed the VP after all she is obsessed with following Sekandi’s footseps.
3.@ Ejakait i already told us that i am Briton by birth when we were in Sunday school we were told to respect parents however much i am provoked, i just cant cross that line.How different is your wife from a prostitute i thought they have the same gadgets that serve the same purpose.
4.No one has challenged me on Architects designing dams so am 100% correct.
Winnie wrote: “1.I find Jacob Oulanya a better candidate for speaker of parliament coz he is more conversant with the law and articulate the bad thing is that we r not comfortable with his traces and sprinkles of UPC ”
you really have a problems with analysis. If you have problem with Olanya’s UPC background, what about Museveni? By his own admission, he spent sometime in UPC. Rugunda too was a strong UPC man. I could count on and on.
PROSTITUTION is not the state of the ANATOMY. IT is a profession and the oldest known to “man”.
YOUR reasoning is so pathetic , just wonder how you can even call yourself a lawyer, mbu born BRITON, I have told you all along that is no big deal, even dogs are born “briton”.JUST because no one has challenged you over the ARCHITECT issue does not mean you are right.THE others have no parental features and even if they saw poop on your dress , they would just laugh at you.IF people were to say something about all the mistakes and gaffes that you get up to , we would have no space or energy to attack M 9 s articles.For instance you use “i” instead of I , so just because no one has said anything about it you are 100% right.” i already told us” – what sense does that make?AND what is the difference between a dam and a hydro electric dam?NRM is just a “mutation” of UPC just like you will realise M 7 , Ruhakana Rugunda, Karooro, Buturo,Mateke to name a few are all UPC.
OUR “thinking outside the box” can not be better illustrated than by the screaming article in the MONITOR ( Winnie would want you to believe its opposition lies) – “GOVERNMENT TO PAY EXTRA 300 bn FOR TRUCKS” in which we are faced with paying that amount because the government bought equipment that is not “fit for purpose” and the reason why no one is being brought to book is because this is a project(deal) that was done by someone “up there”.THE people who buy this kind of equipment are not buying it for what it will do for the country, but what it will mean for their foreign accounts.These people do not ask themselves when buying such equipment from CHINA for road construction , why all CHINESE firms like SIETCO use CATERPILLAR or KOMATSU or JCB. When a whole president gets on a plane to go and buy equipment and then tells all in his campaign that he has bought “caterpillars” for them. CATERPILLAR just like COLGATE is a brand name, not a type of equipment, so what CATERPILLAR have you bought; a grader, compactor or a pair of shoes.
MANY people who are put in charge , apart from being greedy and not have the heart for the nation are like WINNIE who if asked to procure a hydro electric dam will hire the services of SEKAZIGA , not because he has ever designed or has the know how to design such a project, but because he designed the Rwakitura residence and stood on the UPM ticket and his son is married to Salim Salehs daughter.Just like KIYONGA was made the minister of finance simply because he had been the only MP on the UPM ticket.WITH glaring situations like that , we ask why the unit cost of a road is so high and then M 9 pens “Ugandas failure to transform”. With decisions/actions like that we can never transform in a million years even if the whole of the underneath of Uganda is OIL or gold.As they say ” a fortune in the hands of a fool is a misfortune”.
like I said before,paraphrasing someone, a fool talks because they must say something. proceed ejakait….
LOOK in the MIRROR and you will see the fool staring at you.Do not attack me , because thankfully I am in cyber space, much as you would want to put me in a safe house, but punch holes in what I have said , just like MWENDA tried to punch holes in MACENIS post and failed miserably and just like your bed mate WINNIE is here trying to campaign for SEKAZIGA to take over all the hydo electric projects in Uganda.
Just by your own admission, you do not have anything original to say, you have to paraphrase someone, goodness knows who.Etiquette dictates that if you quote someone, you disclose the source, not just to make it appear like you would want to , sound as if you are the originator. BUT then again , I am expecting too much from the likes of you, with your 1 FUSO fleet.
LOL!!! Ejakait way to go. I would love to see Omeros back too! Rwabustare spews garbage from the gutter and as for Winnie she needs a blackboard in black and white.
THANKS, with the likes of these idiots UGANDA will not be going anywhere in a hurry.
Comparing apples with oranges 18th Century with the 21st Century.