I hear these days it is not necessarily the early bird that catches the worm; it is the preferred bird. I trust I am that one. I am not the kind to throw my academic qualifications around, except when I am applying for a job. If you please, I will mention one. I hold a PhD in Philosophy, specialising in Ethics. I am not sure this matters, of course. Though we encourage education, I hear that thinking that academic qualifications matter in improving our practical competencies is ‘elitism’.
So, just assume that I carry no educational qualifications; but I am fit for the job still in the fisherman system. I will labour to lay my other competencies onto your table. First of all, I have a clear grasp of your motivation and objectives of the operation to instil morals. I understand that you are very concerned that ordinary people are becoming so corrupt and scandalous.
You our dear leaders have tried so hard to be morally exemplary, but our morally corrupted people have failed to emulate your wonderful example. You have categorically dealt with the corrupt people in your government. Whoever has been proven to be corrupt has been duly punished without your intervention to defend or shield them. You have not reappointed those who have been censured for corruption.
You knew what signal this would send to the public about your attitude towards the vice. Recently, Beti Olive Kamya came up with a measure that would complement your other anti-corruption initiatives. Yes, she wanted to conduct lifestyle audits on civil servants, to ascertain if their wealth matched their official emoluments. I have never seen the president as happy as he was when he heard her proposal.
The whole country commended his supportive response when he hugged Beti for the innovation. He put to shame those who have been arguing that some corruption is good, and that Beti’s idea might scare away the corrupt to invest elsewhere. However, my views on this issue are mixed. If the corrupt own many of the malls, apartments, and square miles of land in the country,
doesn’t this graduate them from thieves to investors?
Isn’t it moral to invest in Uganda and create jobs? Yes, Machiavellian ethics is also ethics. By its standards, the end justifies the means. We need to teach this ethics too then, for our country to develop. We need to teach Ugandans that it is not really an immoral thing to steal money meant for TB or HIV/Aids care, as long as you can use it to set up a well-managed personal hotel that can provide jobs to several Ugandans.
So, we shall teach public servants to use stolen money ethically. This job is already mine. I can feel it in my knowledge of it. I am quite innovative and progressive in teaching ethics. While some people find stealing elections to be an immoral thing, I hold a different view. It is not always wrong to violate the wishes of the people, even in a democracy.
Sometimes, stealing an election is the moral thing to do to help people get the best leader that they do not have the competencies to appreciate. Accordingly, I will devise a syllabus to teach our citizens how to ethically steal an election. This would involve teaching them how to make sure that the election playing field is violent and a matter of life and death for ideologically bankrupt candidates that try to contest with our God-anointed leaders.
In the first place, if leaders come from God, it logically follows that it is immoral to challenge them. By extension, it would, therefore, be ethical to torture those that oppose divine order. We shall be torturing them for the greater good. Even God appreciates this. The Bible never tells lies. If distracting such clueless challengers opposed to God’s plan, including MPs, would require facilitating them with cars and other goodies from taxpayers’ money, you can’t call that a bribe.
It is a contradiction in terms to say that God’s anointed one gives bribes. In fact, it is blasphemy. Therefore, teaching morality will not necessarily mean castigating the famous brown envelopes. Either way, those envelopes have helped someone to start a business or send their children to school. If they have been that helpful, how can you then say that they are bad?
Many of the things that people call scandals are actually blessings to the country. I know I might be insulted by some Ugandans for these honest thoughts. This is one other vice that we need to teach our people against. I can work well with the president’s decent agent, Full Figure, to teach Ugandans speech etiquette. Some of these insulters are young idle people high on weed.
Again, the president’s advisor, Buchaman, will be instrumental in morally sensitising those ones. On the rising vice of dishonesty, we shall develop a syllabus together with Fred Enanga. My goodness, the public is telling so many lies!
But trust me, with me added to your no-nonsense team, the future is very bright. If considered for this honourable job, I am ready to drop the Ssentongo name for a more appropriate one.
Please, consider me.
jsssentongo@gmail.com
The author is a teacher of philosophy.
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