Such titles should be a reserve for leaders who exude exceptional character, not these pathological liars who group themselves with guns to catapult a government then agglutinate themselves into power as malignant leaders who do not value reciprocal obligations but want allegiance from a disgruntled population whose discontentment is looked upon as recalcitrance.
Our allegiance shouldn’t come on a silver plate as though we are docile. In thinking that we are docile, that is why they act as though they are not bound to the reciprocal obligations which come with leadership positions.
We were told that to err is human but as Barack Obama once said, leadership comes with responsibility to admit mistakes and to speak the truth all the time. If a leader speaks the truth, behaves like a human being, admits mistakes, presides over a country where critics are not pariahs—why not address them in their excellency?Â
What is excellent in a leader who, after taking an oath of office, stands in a bulletproof cage to threaten the extinction of opposition or those who speak truth to power? We have seen other leaders giving inaugural speeches promising to be presidents of all countrymen and women regardless of whether they voted for them or not but for Museveni thinks that to command respect and allegiance, he must threaten his critics and in doing so, he loses the excellence and honor to be addressed as his excellency or fountain of honor.
I mean, if you promise to use your power as a president to crush me or to make me a pariah in my own country, why should I not wonder at the excellency title you own?
What is excellent in a leader who takes all the credit but transfers the blame to other people?
My issue is: we live in a country where a president is a liar, never admits mistakes, re-appoints looters (I do not know whether he loves the slogan ‘a looter continua’), glorifies extrajudicial murders as long as they are opposition and demonstrating their disgust against his warped methods, violates or bends the law to favor his exaggerated self-importance—and still he is addressed as his excellency or fountain of honor? What is excellent in such actions?
Leaders who transude excellence, know when to go, they do not bribe lawmakers to remove the limits from the supreme law such that they cement themselves in power until they die. The dogma of heaping encomiums on a leader regardless of their flaws which they do not admit is for cowards. These leaders need to be told the truth in lieu of being their desperate chamchas.
If other presidents are excellent in their characters and they admit mistakes and speak the truth, respect the law, and treat citizens equally – then they qualify the titles excellency and fountain of honor but these ones here who do contrary to what is expected of a leader, personally I have no shame and fear in addressing them as despots or in accordance with their actions.Â
One cannot steal public funds meant for putting drugs in hospitals and due to lack of the same, patients die and you refer to such a leader as an honorable person. What is honorable about stealing?
There is a dictum in Ruhororo that ‘Okubaziika heihi nikyo kyikutuma banuuka’ literally means that the reason the dead smell even after the burial is because they are buried in shallow graves.
There is no shame in addressing Museveni as a despot and a failure. I do not need to be rich or high profile to remind the president that he is not excellent, his character is paradigmatic of stinking dictatorship and maladministration.
kakwenzarukirabashaija@gmail.com
