Trust President Museveni on fight against corruption

 

Instead, the president talked about the Parish Development Model without making any single comment on the scandal. Afterwards, some people immediately went on radio and social media to say that the president was less bothered about that issue and that the ministers implicated in the iron sheets scandal will get away with it.

 

However, before that, we’d read stories on different blogs claiming that the president was furious in one of the cabinet meetings to the extent that some people run away while others decided to be quiet. This information was difficult to be verified because only ministers attend cabinet meetings and the media isn’t allowed in. 

 

The media has however remained consistent in following and reporting about the story of  Karomoja iron sheets, especially the New Vision and Daily Monitor. When minister Mary Goretti Kitutu was arrested, obviously, some people started saying that she has been made a sacrificial lamb at the expense of her colleagues who also participated in the shameful and embarrassing activity of diverting the items which were meant for the vulnerable people of Karamoja.

 

I have seen people including the bishop pleading that Kitutu be pardoned because she didn’t steal alone. And I wondered if that was a reason enough to set her free. What have the police and the DPP said about that matter? They’ve been very clear that other files are being worked on so that other implicated ministers can be charged in accordance with the law.

 

It should be noted that several ministers have already appeared before the police and made different statements and two more have been arrested. 

 

Ugandans are used to street politics where people make noise on the microphone without any actions. They seem to have been taken by the opposition kind of politics of fooling them on the microphone. But we should all believe that actions are more louder than words.

 

It wouldn’t make any meaning if the president called parliament to Kololo to castigate the implicated ministers and then afterwards nothing is done to them. What would happen if those ministers were not arrested?

 

Those same people would still accuse the president of making empty threats. I think the statement he will make after all the implicated ministers have been charged will surely be more meaningful and will send a signal to the rest of the government officials who were thinking of engaging themselves in other dubious deals.

 

In his Easter message to Ugandans, President Museveni wrote that corruption has for many years crippled wealth creation hence affecting the economic growth of our country. He talked about the unpatriotic civil servants and politicians who steal government money and even ask for bribes from the public before giving them services including investors.

 

And this is very true in a way that some civil servants have taken it as a norm to misuse money meant for different government programs some collaborate with accounting officers at the ministry level to execute their deals.

 

A program like Emyoga which was strictly meant for the people with different skills to acquire some money and add into the businesses ended up helping the civil servants who are actually better off and who were not target groups, without any shame they transferred the same habit to the Parish Development Model which is targeting the vulnerable poor by either asking bribes from them or misusing the PDM money. 

 

President Museveni’s war against corruption has been on course as opposed to Timothy Kalyegira’s opinion where he was asking why the president tolerates corruption. We should only say that the president’s efforts to fight corruption has for several times been frustrated by the people who he entrusts with big positions in the government. 

 

 

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