The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Lukwago says that all signs indicate that “Museveni’s time could be up soon”.
“I am yet to come to terms with the fact that Museveni is going to be in charge of the state for the next five years; it is one thing I am yet to recover from.
“Museveni has created a monstrous situation where he approaches everything with a bush war mentality,” he said.
He predicts that Museveni’s new term will be a very difficult one.
He said Museveni’s contemporaries have left the stage, and more fallouts with the remaining ones will eventually take a toll on him. “He is now dealing with these young ones who are excited about power, they are just reckless and eventually they will be forced to jump ship.
“Many of his comrades have deserted him. The Johnny-come-lately like Tumwebaze, Todwong, Anite do not know what they are doing. They have no respect for people like Kyaligonza, Amama, Besigye, Otafiire. I don’t see any strong ally he has, I doubt Kayihura is even comfortable with him, it is only his son Muhoozi and his brother Gen, Saleh who are with him 100%.”
“We are likely to see the family rule take centre stage. The likes of Rwabogo and Karugire are going to come out of the background; Sam Kuteesa will play a central role in this country”.
Succession talk
The next scheduled presidential election in 2021 will find Museveni at the ripe old age of 76, not only will he have surpassed the constitutional age limit for which one can stand for President (unless –as expected- the constitution is amended to remove this bar) but he will be also be slowing down in terms of activity even by his own admission in an earlier interview about reaching the age of 75. It is from here that the complex question of who succeeds Museveni will come into sharp focus.
“NRM has no idea who is going to succeed Museveni,” says renowned political scholar and researcher, Dr Frederick Golooba Mutebi. He adds, however, that as a country, Ugandans need to seriously think about who will succeed Museveni and that the NRM leaders have not discussed the succession issue at length.
The succession issue culminated into the epic fallout between Museveni and long-time comrade, former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi who was also NRM secretary-general. Mbabazi accused Museveni of reneging on an agreement to hand power to him in 2016. After the fallout, Mbabazi contested against Museveni in the presidential election and lost dismally.
The fires around this subject have in the past been fuelled by people like Gen. David Sejusa aka Tinyefuza, the maverick UPDF general who insists Museveni is plotting to have his son, Brig. Muhoozi, succeed him. Sejusa even claimed that Museveni had hatched a plot to eliminate all opposition to Muhoozi’s succession.
Although Brig. Muhoozi has been mentioned a lot in the perceived scheme of him succeeding his father, he has not commented on it publicly. Museveni, meanwhile, reacted sharply and sent Sejusa scampering into exile in Britain three years ago.
But Golooba says such handling of the succession issue tends to blow it out by the media and international community.
“For Museveni, it is not an issue. I think it is something he will eventually have to work on because he will have to go,” says Golooba.
He speculates that, at the right moment, Museveni will probably sit with his NRM-insiders and others in the country and decide and adds, however, that Uganda needs to build a well-defined and efficient mechanism to enable regular transfer of power not just at party level but at national level.
Commentators who toe the line of orderly succession within NRM often speak of First Lady Janet Museveni as a major power player in the succession story. She is said to be the matriarch of a powerful behind the scenes group that is increasingly becoming the real power behind Museveni’s throne.
Faced with an opponent they cannot defeat at home, Museveni’s opponents often resort to solutions from the international community.
Lukwago, for example, believes the international stage will in the next five years prove a puzzling arena for Museveni to navigate with the likely entry of some new players in the American White House. Lukwago says it is not clear how Museveni will do business with America if Republican contender Donald Trump wins the presidency.
We can agree that government need to lower the cost of finance, iflation to stablise the value of the currency, however issues such as interest rates and inflation are macro factors,meaning that government has little control over them, these forces are widely driven by external market forces and duly influenced by micro factors such as stability in the country and the flow of foreign currency into the country, which in return influence exchange rates ,and we know that, without sufficient flow of foreign currency such as pound sterling, us dollars and euros the economy will be in a non performing mode.
All these economic threats are simply caused by both macro and micro factors sorrounding the government, issues such luck of production means no exports to earn the foreign currency. Political instability in the country, means less flow of investments and finance into the economy. Uganda is importing more than we export that deficit alone is a doom to the overall performance of the economy with more consequences on the general growth of the gross domestic product (gdp) . Bank of uganda should concentrate on making sure that they employ the right economic policies and how effective the fiscal and monetary policies are, bad policies will inevitably cause inflation and high interest rates on finance and commodity.
In simple words, uganda’s economy is poorly managed coupled with political instability in the country this makes it difficult to do business, hence causing bank of uganda to borrow finance with high interest which it passes on to the commercial banks to give out loans, gilts and bonds to local businesses. We can be secure only if we can export more outside east africa in the dollars,euro and sterling zones.
Government is supposed to be the key driver of economic expansion, and development this can be done by opening up new avenues how government can earn revenue, however the uganda government has concentated on taxation alone which is unsustainable for long term development goals, uganda’s taxes have shot out of the window due to narrow and shallow planing and decision making. There is a range of avenues how government can expand its revenue Base without just concentrating on taxes, high taxes discourage investment, hence hinder businesses and individuals from investing in business, which will cause shortage in supply , hence causing increased demand on products and services. Take this example which falls under fiscal policy: I imported a car from the UK cif mombasa then uganda, first the car costed me £2500 buying price £900 shipping or fright £200 inspection (jvc) £800 costs at mombasa port, after arriving in uganda paid £ 4000 pounds,in taxes and number plate, in total the cost will be £8000 pounds, so if I was to this car and have a chance of making any profit, I will have to sell more than £ 10000 pounds, which is very very expensive for such a car, even if I was lucky to get a customer to buy it at that price ( £10000) my profit will be £ 2000, and government has already taken £4000 two times my profit of £ 2000, for me a business man after nearly 4 month of hard work only to end up earning on my investment less than what government has earned it’s rediculus,it should be the opposite were I as the owner of capital earn more and government less, and that what I call poor policy management.