She added that NRM has a new thinking on the nature of corruption. NRM, she said, had made everyone believe that corruption could assist development by facilitating capital formation and investment.
And to attest to this thinking, General Salim Saleh, who is now heading Operation Wealth Creation, once argued that if government were to create amnesty for public servants who openly accept they had stolen public funds, but are allowed to keep their ill-gotten wealth, this could help stem the growing cancer of corruption in the country.
Saleh further claimed that if the corrupt are pardoned, then they could be asked to pay taxes on their ill-gotten wealth. In a way, Saleh was confirming that corruption can be sanitized as investment capital! Fighting corruption was one of NRM’s ten point programme, then a guideline for Uganda’s economic recovery. This was abandoned.
In 2006 while celebrating twenty years after capturing state power, President Museveni told his audience at Kololo ground, that he didn’t know there was a lot of corruption in the country.
He added that now that the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) had been defeated, his government was going to fight corruption. Indeed since then there are agencies and laws, which were created to rid the country of this malaise. But these agencies and laws are stymied by the lack of political will.
President Museveni is the chief consumer of all intelligence in the country. He is in such a privileged position to tell the financial abilities and sources of every government official. He can initiate an investigation against any person of interest in this country.
But when we hear how public officials and families have carved out entire pieces of the state for themselves, then we have to ask questions about the efficacy of the office of the president. The president is walking today against corruption, the first of its kind.
The theme: “A corruption-free Uganda starts with me” is ironic given the profile of the participants in the walk. President Museveni has a chance to fight corruption and this could be his lasting legacy.
The Observer suggests the president’s will to participate in the walk should be translated into an enduring fight to end corruption. There should be no sacred cows. The corrupt have already enjoyed their unofficial amnesty; it is now time to redeem and return what was illicitly taken away.