{UAH} Museveni leads under the constitution, not as portrayed by the western media

The Uk based Economist newspaper and its other sister outlets,
recently dedicated a good amount of their print space to publish
nothing else but extreme hate content against Uganda and its
President; a recent style of journalism i find so strange; but only
common and popular with outlets of gutter press,to say the least. The
article was neither an objective critique of the political realities
obtaining in Uganda nor a balanced account of what Uganda has managed
to achieve or miss under the leadership of President Museveni, but
rather was a well spiced instrument of propaganda from a hired
political hit man; a merchant of hatred, only rehearsing dirty
insults, innuendos and attacks against the person of the President of
Uganda.

Fortunately, the tenor of the article exposed the unnecessary personal
outrage and emotions of the writer leaving any objective reader with
an opportunity to discern easily between dirty handworks of haters and
what can be taken as objective criticism. It was an attempt by the
economist newspaper , albeit a failed one, to lend a hand of support
and credence to the desperate anti- NRM forces whose political efforts
in Uganda have for decades now failed to win the confidence of the
electorate. This was however not surprising,well aware of the agenda
of the western Media and their biases towards African leaders;
especially those with reasonable amount of influence in their
countries and in the region and with clear footprints of
transformation planted on the development trajectories of their
countries. It's that category of leaders that they seek to target and
demonize by falsely judging them on their own diversionary 'artificial
symbols of democracy' and rhetoric. This is the mere democratic
symbolism that the western media and its sponsors propagate and scream
so much loud about for Africa to embrace and thus get diverted from
its development realities at the expense of its peoples' empowerment.

The earlier Africa and her people put aside their small differences
and concentrated on what unites them so as to collectively resist
these diversionary and generic prescriptions of symbolic democracy,
the better for our continent's future. What these western media
channels do is to target and frame the portraits of these resolute
African leaders like President Museveni and others in the stereotype
of their attitudes towards Africa and her people. Yet they cover up
the actions of most of their own despots at home and fail to condemn
the ego-centric wars sponsored and Exported to other countries by
their leaders leaving their own economies bleeding profusely, citizens
chocking on growing public debt and thousands of their tax payers
jobless. What a shame?

The economist newspaper could perhaps gain more readership and some
sort of legitimacy as an impartial umpire if it exposed such
inequities in the backyard of its masters . Unfortunately it cannot.
The whole agenda any way of these western media outlets that we should
all know, is not to speak good of africa's progress, but rather to
target and demonize such transformational leaders on the continent
with strong and purposeful agendas for their countries' future as they
deceptively pamper and promote weak unpopular stooges against them.
The late Melesi Zenawi of Ethiopia for example, suffered so much wrath
of these partisan international media outlets, despite his land mark
legacy of transformation that Ethiopia takes so much pride in and
which has acted as a buffer for its economic resilience.

It was therefore not surprising reading that much hateful content as
contained in the economist article entitled 'Uganda and its President,
a leader who cannot bear to retire; unleashing all sorts of emotional
outbursts against the person of President Museveni. With a history of
political violence and short-lived regimes characterizing post
independent uganda, President Museveni's twenty seven year stable stay
in power has confounded many; friends and foes alike. In spite of all
else, Uganda's post independence moment of truth was in January 1986;
and the 'man responsible for that moment' was Yoweri Museveni. His
consecutive electoral victories therefore, are well grounded and come
as deserving rewards from the population that know and feel the stable
and prosperous journey he has walked them through . This of course
comes at the chagrin of his adversaries and their foreign
sympathizers. Yet on the other hand the much pampered Ugandan
opposition have failed to seize any ground because of their failure to
appreciate the status quo and thus propose alternatives that don't
seek to undo what is already real but instead work to consolidate the
gains.

For starters, democratic symbolism is an issue to understand and
really debate whether that is the right direction nation states should
take or indeed whether that is a form of democracy to talk of? It is
the rhetoric of 'appearing to be' what actually one is not and the
tendency to emphasize what is secondary while paying little or no
attention to the primary antidotes of real democracy and development.
Yet real democracy should not only preach rhetoric of mere political
appearances but rather work to entrench the actual fundamental
prerequisites that enable democratic cultures to thrive. NRM has never
worked for mere political appearances but rather for real causes even
when a certain amount of a high price has had to be paid. Any country
worth being called a democracy therefore, should be judged on these
parameters and Not on Questions of longevity or short stay of leaders.
What is crucial is the path that the leader navigates a country
through and the policies he adopts. In fact, if the policy instruments
are excellent as is the case for Uganda, longevity becomes very
significant. Conversely, regular change of leaders is no guarantor for
good governance. If that was to be the case, then post independent
Uganda,would have taken off much faster as a super democracy in it's
early post- independence period, given the fact that between 1962 and
1985 alone, Uganda changed 8 Presidents . So why didn't a democratic
culture then take deep root ? Was the problem then, leaders who
couldn't bear to retire as was alluded to by the Economist? Certainly
Not. The problem was the collapse of the entire political structure
without anything in place to support the evolution of democracy.
Fortunately Our Political history is recorded for all to know. The
works of NRM have enabled us to entrench real prerequisites for
democracy building as opposed to artificial symbols. These
prerequisites include; participation of the citizenry in determining
their destiny, a free press, free and fair, periodic elections. All
these have since been restored and no leader in uganda at every level
leads without the people's will.

The most confounding aspect of President Museveni's lengthy stay in
power therefore, is NOT the length of time he has been in power, but
Rather, what he has been able to achieve for his country. The aspect
of longevity alone distracts us from asking relevant questions like:
how has the country fared since Museveni came to power? What are
Uganda's strategic challenges? How are the socio-economic indicators
of growth in all sectors doing? Let us attempt to answer these
questions and therefore assess scientifically the performance of the
Museveni administration, political biases of his opponents
notwithstanding. For instance the NRM government has managed over the
years, to steadily maintain a positive rate of sustainable economic
growth in terms of real GDP. Since 1992/93, fiscal policy in Uganda
has entailed very strict budgetary discipline. Government has kept
firm control over its own expenditures to ensure that it does not have
to borrow from the domestic sources to finance budget deficits. Fiscal
discipline has been absolutely essential for the control of inflation.
In turn, low inflation is a prerequisite for the higher levels of
private investment that have sustained rapid economic growth in
Uganda.

For all this long, the main macroeconomic objectives of Government
that have been steadily pursued without any policy reversals or
deviations have been: to ensure rapid real GDP growth, to keep
consumer price inflation to five percent or below, to maintain a
prudent level of foreign reserves, and to ensure that the real
exchange rate is compatible with a competitive external sector.
Maintaining low inflation is an especially crucial objective of
economic policy because high inflation has a number of harmful effects
on the economy. In particular it increases uncertainty about future
economic variables and thus discourages investment. Low and stable
inflation is a prerequisite for private investment in long term
productive assets. It is very difficult to make long term forecasts
about the commercial viability of an investment project in conditions
of high inflation, because the future prices on which the viability of
the project will depend are very difficult to predict when inflation
is high.

Hence inflation makes long term investment much more risky. High
inflation also erodes the real value of money and thus discourages
savings. It often leads to shrinking of the financial system, as
happened in Uganda in the 1980s. Inflation is also regressive, because
the poor are much less able to protect the real value of their savings
from erosion than are the rich. For these reasons, the control of
inflation has been and still is a central objective of macroeconomic
policy, and an objective which the NRM government has succeeded in
achieving since 1992/93 to date because of being able to maintain
strong budget discipline at the aggregate fiscal level. Even when
inflation shot to a double digit last year because mainly of exogenous
factors, it was eventually squeezed back to as low as 3.4% the lowest
ever by the same correct fiscal and monetary policy instruments of
government.

Another indicator of a well managed economy is the way how a
government manages its borrowing in order to finance its fiscal
deficit especially for a developing country like Uganda that was
characterized by long periods of civil strife and general economic
collapse. If the Government runs a fiscal deficit which is too large
to be financed from donor funds, it must borrow from the domestic
banking system, which generally entails borrowing from the Central
Bank. When the Central Bank lends money to Government it creates
credit – which means that it prints money. When Government borrows
from the Central Bank there is an injection of high powered money into
the economy, which money is not backed by production. Furthermore,
excessive Government borrowing from the banking system usually leads
to the crowding out of private sector borrowing. The private sector is
squeezed out of credit markets as the Central Bank tries to counter
the affect of Government borrowing on inflation by tightening monetary
policy. If the private sector is squeezed out of the credit markets by
Government's demand for credit, there will clearly be adverse affects
on real activity in the private sector, and therefore on the economy's
growth prospects.

Our government has been sensitive to these effects of excessive
borrowing and has tried as much as possible to mitigate them. This
however, does not mean that Government cannot run fiscal deficits – it
actually does– but it ensures that the deficits are financed from
non-inflationary sources, such as donor grants and soft loans after
seeking parliamentary approval. A favorable tax policy has been
pursued over the years and Uganda remains the only one in east africa
with the lowest rate of tax contribution to GDP averaging about 13%.
Despite pressure from the IMF and world bank to raise the tax rate
contribution to GDP the government has moved cautiously not to hurt
the growing private sector.

I am dwelling much on good economic management because it's a variable
highly dependant on the nature of the country's Political leadership
and it can therefore be a good measure in assessing governance
credentials of any regime. No wonder the first alarming signs that
come with effects of instability or bad governance in any country are
inflation levels. This should be the yard stick in my opinion to
evaluate Museveni and his long service, biases notwithstanding. His
contenders too should stop the cheap game of running only on this wave
of his long stay without substantially articulating their alternative
agenda. With or without President Museveni active on the Political
scene of uganda, the citizenry will continue to reject resoundingly
the political schemers that only seek to ride on mere sentiments and
rhetoric, without offering dependable alternative ideas.

By Frank Tumwebaze

Minister in charge of the Presidency and Kampala