{UAH} Email Meetings

Mr. Benon Mukasa,

 

I do appreciate the sympathies, and while I may not always express it and it certainly may not always come through on my email postings, I have always appreciated your words of counsel both in our private communications and in your public postings.

 

In an organization as diverse and as vibrant as UNAA, differences of opinions are inevitable, that is healthy and a discussion about the organization's constitution bodes well for the organization's future. Asking that all UNAA organs operate within the constitutional provisions, however inadequate we may deem them is hardly equivalent to asking those organs to be insubordinate to any one organ.

 

This discussion should be encouraged and certainly expanded and while I was not able to make it, I so very much appreciated Council Member Dr. Daniel Kawuma's efforts to set up the conference call last weekend engaging the UNAA public and Speaker Ronnie Kabaale's earlier pledge to set up community meetings discussion the UNAA Constitution.

 

UNAA needs this. As leaders, we have a moral obligation to educate the public about the constitution and we owe it to the next generation of leaders that come after us to abide by the constitution. Imagine where Africa would be if our leaders followed the constitution? Just imagine.

 

I believe that part of leadership involves looking at the long term implication of decisions, not just the day to day politicking; it involves making very painful, difficult decisions which may be unpopular but are good for the long term future of the organization. One does not have the luxury of worrying about whether a decision is popular or not – that is the job of a politician. A true leader looks at the long term.

If the organization in this particular case loses some in the short term because it has chosen to abide by the constitution, I firmly believe that it will gain even more in the long term preciously because of the same reason -- it's has chosen to respect the constitution. I do not know of any society that has ever gained anything in the long term by intentionally compromising its own constitution.

 

In a situation like this concerning the constitution and what the long term implication of compromising with it would mean for UNAA, where I stay up debating with my conscious,  I am comforted by the words of Thomas Jefferson,  "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

 

Brian M. Kwesiga

President & CEO,

Ugandan North American Association - UNAA

972.415.6372 | www.unaa.org | "United We Stand"

On Nov 3, 2013, at 9:24 PM, Benon Mukasa <kyeyune@aol.com> wrote:

David:

I am sympathetic to the president too. 

And that is why I have appealed to him in the past to exercise leadership and compromise with the other organs of UNAA. Sometimes one has to lose some in the short term, in order to gain more in the long term.

Benon.