{UAH} Yes, 27 years in one job is not just a long time; it’s a lifetime - Bernard Tabaire - monitor.co.ug

http://www.monitor.co.ug/OpEd/OpEdColumnists/BernardTabaire/27-years-in-one-job-is-not-just-a-long-time/-/878688/1928434/-/ubik61/-/index.html

Yes, 27 years in one job is not just a long time; it's a lifetime

It is true President Museveni has been in power for 27 years. It is also true that he is barely doing anything to fight corruption, which has blossomed under his watch.

For pointing out those terrible facts and for suggesting that the President's State-of-the-Nation Address fell short, the Uganda government has yet again done what it should not: throw a fit.

Talk, stoutly denied by the Delegation of the European Union to Uganda, is that its ambassador, Dr Roberto Ridolfi, is hastening out of Kampala because of commenting on the heavily debated matters of governance and political transition.

That tantrum has called fresh attention to those issues. Which now has the rest of us chipping in, keeping the story alive as it were. Diplomats have to be diplomats and play by the international conventions that govern their work. That means that they have to watch their diplomatic brains and tongues. No loose talk, no straight talk.

For his alleged breach, the ambassador must ship out fast. The local EU office says he is returning to Brussels months before his tour was due to end because he has been promoted. Even if true, the Museveni government can only be happy about that development.

We have had one President for nearly three decades. That is a bad idea every whichever way you weigh it. We lose our vitality the older we get. All living things do. Even governments lose their swag. They shrink, wither and die.

That sounds like the end of the story. Not quite. Human beings live on through their children and children's children and on and on.
Governments too can live on and on, but only if they find a way to regenerate themselves. A government that has not renewed itself for three decades cannot have any vigour in it. The Museveni government is limp.

It is wobbling because of the weight of incompetence and incoherence. I cannot get over reports that my government signed a memorandum of understanding with one Chinese company to build a hydropower station at Karuma and then proceed to give the contract to a different company. All this not done deliberately, but because of kavuyo in the way the government is organised and run.

Let's say we cut this government some slack on the Karuma matter because the project is too big, so complex that we are unable to put our heads around it. After all, both the minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank have separately remarked upon Uganda's woeful inadequacies in designing, costing and implementing big national projects.

But how then to explain the simple and straightforward matter of hiring a new managing director of the national water body? Current and former ministers of water – Ephraim Kamuntu and Maria Mutagamba – plus the board should be out of government, dismissed with disgrace. Their boss, Mr Yoweri Museveni, should also have long been sanctioned for weighing in and making his officials' incompetence and lack of courage even worse.

Ah, well, Karuma became such an embarrassing mess (embarrassing to the few Ugandans with a public conscience) because commission agents have captured the government.

And National Water, an otherwise decent parastatal, risks becoming a wreck because of sustained weak political management in the water ministry. Old-fashioned political interference, better known as "god-fatherism", has poured even more cold water on things.

I will not even go on about how accounting officers who lose billions in their dockets get to be referred to as whistle-blowers by the President. Mollycoddling corruption, incompetence and negligence. That is what it is. Each one of those is a "sackable" offence. Yet no sacking has occurred.
If you are going to turn a public entity such as the Microfinance Support Centre – reportedly established to help fight poverty – into a slush fund machine as a former head is claiming, anything goes.

This stinking state of affairs is what happens to a country where a government sticks around a lifetime. So Signor Ridolfi said nothing new or profound. And even if I don't like foreigners saying it as it is to us, I still defend their right to do so – more so this time around. Mr Museveni's government does the opposite. That is a pity.

Mr Tabaire is a media consultant with the African Centre for Media Excellence. bentab@hotmail.com

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