I do not fathom that President Museveni is in any dire need of advice.
He has personally made it clear more than once, especially to foreign governments which usually dare to pester him with a lot of unsolicited representations, that he is not short of ideas about governing Uganda.
Some people then wonder why the renowned self-willed Ugandan president needs to have in his till such a large retinue of presidential advisors stretching almost on every subject. His huge numbers of ministers are, by their very ministerial designations, also his advisors.
However, the seeming perplexity is by its inner account largely self-induced and clinically unimaginative. In politics, relations between principals and their subordinates are not deduced just from framed titles. On the contrary, the real concrete relationship between principals and their subordinates substantively translates what the titles perform.
As the appointing authority, it is unlikely that President Museveni would have desired to shackle his presidency with the over-lordship of his appointees. He could not constitute vast numbers of presidential advisors so as to be harangued with whatever besets their minds when he has declared to possess full faculties to be the president.
The teeming presidential advisors can only be inferred to be intended for receiving directives for onward conveyance to the public. They become presidential advisers not by virtue of giving ideas to the president, but because they receive and communicate the president’s ideas.
The inversion of humble duty to the president into a grand title is not peculiar only to President Museveni. A cake is iced for improved effect both in taste and appearance.
Under the present-day business etiquette, famed chief executive officers are shy to flaunt their clear supremacy when dealing with obvious underlings. Bosses consider it vulgar to be seen bellowing and barking crudely to their juniors.
A peremptory order to a subordinate is normally couched as if was meant to be a ‘request’. A courteous smile is employed to disguise boiling anger.
The Kiswahili and even Luganda languages are now accustomed to interchange kuomba and okusaba for the harsher tones, leta upesi or mpa mangu! This way, the subjects feel smoothened with ease and are left with residual pride of their own to execute ordinarily-disagreeable assignments.
The top echelons, drenched with power and moneyed resources, have now replicated their hypocrisy into a fledged class sub-culture.
During their leisure moments, they feign and fence, downplaying their every known conspicuous affluence by turning out wearing ripped jeans at the knee joints or some such miserly attire. It is their way of toning to look ordinary.
On their part, the lot living a wretched existence is always in haste to be out of their poor lives. Age-old poverty does not create envy to look poor. Where the poor borrow often ill-fitting wear from their neighborhood to appear neater in a village ceremony, they crane out their necks just to establish that they, too, are of class.
During the UPC period after the overthrow of the tyrannical military regime of Idi Amin, a group of wheel-cart pushers often shared the end of their day’s misery by downing the potent waragi in a joint in Kisenyi slums.
The Luo amongst them teased their colleagues from the West Nile for having lost power, henceforth suggesting that the Luos be accorded special courtesy because they had then become the new rulers.
A hitherto quieter voice intervened. He asked how the Luo wheel-cart pushers were ruling yet they were still in the same Kisenyi, their faces frowning from the anguish of the enguuli drink, instead of soothing their throats with ice-cold beer at the Nile Mansions where their celebrated new Luo elite was.
Due to insufficient comprehension of political concepts by our Ugandan elite, the people over whom they claimed leadership were fed with crude versions. Those in occupation of high offices were always keen to mislead their relatives that the offices they wielded were equally for the whole of their clans.
The tendency to oversimplify intricate political concepts continues to mislead many of our people. A lot of reference has been made regarding transformation of Uganda into a middle-income status. Only a few of our political stalwarts who repeat this particular cue can explain what this proposed middle-class status actually entails.
The predominant perception of this said middle-class is not viewed from its entrepreneurial efforts, vital economic linkages and culture of skills but, rather, from the display of a lavish consumption pattern in supermarkets.
This way, individuals with the highest propensity to expend money such as robbers and privileged government officials are pictured as the foremost icons of the middle-class in our country.
The muddled posture has not left the opposition groups untouched, either. Many of them, who depend on being invited to grade-star hotels where they are provided everything in their rooms, assume that politics, too, must be like their free lavish hotel rooms, with valets readily on duty to remind them time for breakfast, what to eat for lunch or when to sleep.
They mutter and complain of unlevelled grounds expecting that it is the duty of others to accord them political offices despite their own failure of self-organization.
This is why those of us who want to claim to be politicians must first learn and grasp political concepts before venturing to call ourselves politicians.
The author is the publicity secretary of the NRM historical leaders’ forum.