In response to Museveni's views on the World Bank's suspension of loans to Uganda, Bobi Wine
Gen. Museveni,
Your current outcry about the World Bank withholding future support to Uganda exemplifies your four-decade rule's ideological confusion and policy nomadism.
You blamed everyone else, including imperialists, neo-colonial agents, saboteurs, bureaucrats, technocrats, the Cabinet, dishonest politicians, the media, etc. as usual instead of accepting responsibility for anything that has gone wrong. However, you were quick to take credit for any alleged triumphs on your own.
Your lengthy argument is carefully examined to uncover four flimsy and false premises, as well as the inescapably incorrect conclusions you draw. Evidence suggests that, in addition to those you are blaming for Uganda's unsuccessful socioeconomic change, you are the country's leading neocolonist.
The following four points show how hollow your reasoning is:
HISTORICAL DISTORTION
You consistently present an inaccurate and partial image of Uganda before to 1986, to start. Your misleading narrative claimed that Uganda was a failed state with all kinds of issues and that the National Resistance Army had redeemed itself in 1986.
The young people of today must be aware that the State of Uganda held a number of operational parastatals despite the severe harm that the violence (in which you played a big role) meted out against the quality of life. It owned successful businesses, as well as public facilities like district or regional referral hospitals and schools that served as a springboard for the much-needed start-up. In the name of privatization, your dictatorship presided over the theft and improper management of these assets.
You still haven't explained why the nation's textile, public transportation, food processing, leisure facilities, agricultural cooperatives, and manufacturing capacities, which made cities like Jinja, Bushenyi, Masaka, and Mbale brilliant beacons of our young nation's potential, disappeared.
You have replaced Uganda's public capital with dreadful gimmicks like Operation Wealth Creation and agricultural cooperatives that were once successful with SACCOs, which are a complete failure.
The innocent, well-intentioned, and forward-thinking actor that you portray as the NRA is not and has never been true. It was and is now, under the name NRM, a violent, corrupt force that has contributed significantly to Uganda's sluggish socioeconomic transition. Under you, Sir, neocolonialism is still very much active.
You are the main proponent of neo-colonialism.
You are the undeniable defender of neo-colonial and neoliberal objectives among the nine persons who have held the position of President in the 61 years since our alleged independence.
Under the direction and support of the same World Bank that you are now condemning, the sale of public utility infrastructure took place during your administration.
You have presided over the heedless deregulation, severe liberalization, and sacrifice of our public sector on the altar of foreign interests. Your hypocrisy is transparent to us.
You have sacrificed a number of domestic investors, such as Sembule Electronics, the Dairy Corporation, and a promising number of locally owned banks, to the Bretton Woods deities. They were taken out and you brought in questionable foreign investors like Velupillai Kananathan, Rosa Whittaker, Kristian von Hornsleth, and Enrica Pinetti!
Our commercial banking system, which is foreign-owned, extractive, and poorly regulated and is intended to undermine local industry through outrageous lending rates and anti-SME development, exists in place of a local banking sector.
The fact that your government continues to borrow from commercial banks in spite of wise policy recommendations to the contrary does not improve matters because it worsens the situation for the same private sector whose triumphs you continue to tout.
Our nation has repeatedly supported imperialist stances at the United Nations General Assembly on issues pertaining to the so-called Global War on Terror, international trade laws, agricultural policy, and educational policy under your dictatorship.
You are masterful at turning our brave service members into mercenary labor that can be hired out to the highest bidder. Under the paradoxical and futile banner of Pan Africanism, Ugandan troops are serving Western interests in a number of African nations.
Last but not least, millions of young Ugandans will never have access to the affordable, publicly funded, high-quality education that you and many others in your generation enjoyed, despite your modest upbringing, as a result of the deliberate transfer of this crucial sector to the World Bank and underregulated, profit-driven private players. One more effective neo-colonialist, please!
MISTREATING THE DEBT BURDEN OF UGANDA
You claimed to object to the significant debt load Uganda had accumulated while admitting that borrowing has been detrimental. But if you don't recognize the causes of our debt load, that assertion is false.
Inefficiency in the public sector is a big factor. How is anyone supposed to take such a claim seriously when you are in charge of a vast, taxpayer-funded patronage network that includes over 70 ministers, hundreds of Resident District Commissioners (RDCs), countless presidential advisors,'special' assistants, and paramilitary groups of every description?
And this is not even mentioning the gerrymandering (or, more precisely, the mushrooming of electoral constituencies) you oversaw, which increased the number of elective seats to the point that Parliament alone now has more than 500 lawmakers, up from the initial 30.
Additionally, the Life Presidency you manage is a gigantic expense for taxpayers due to its regular additional (and classified) expenditure requests to Parliament as well as the patronage network it enjoys that is publicly supported. Budget cuts hardly ever have an impact on the lavish lifestyle your group leads, but they obliterate vital industries like public health and education.
Your emphasis on maintaining the status quo has led to the destruction of the district, the network of national referral hospitals, and the infrastructure supporting public health in general. Due to your replacement of the once-reliable hospitals in Iganga, Itojo, Mbale, Soroti, and Lira with equally appalling health centers, the once-reliable hospitals in those locations are now moribund, understaffed, and underequipped death traps. Your only hope is that the United States Agency for International Development would cover your shortcomings by funding crucial public health requirements, such as providing for the medical and health needs of our armed forces. In this case, who is the neocolonialist?
Any right-thinking Ugandan will take your claims of improved public sector efficiency seriously the day you lower the size and expense of government and make loans available for productive uses rather than patronage.
LACK OF IDEOLOGICAL CONVICTION AND FAILED LEADERSHIP.
The combination of the three aforementioned flaws in your strategy for managing public affairs is that you have rejected the concepts you advocated in two books and several speeches, particularly What Is Africa's Problem? Additionally, you have abandoned the principles of Chairman Mao Zedong, whose example you have consistently professed to follow when it comes to socioeconomic change and national independence. You have been their main representative in the Great Lakes region despite having previously accused others of lacking ideology and intellectual depth. What does that indicate about the ideological orientation you possess?
Furthermore, you have mistakenly confused economic development, which is about qualitative change and advancement, with economic growth, which is about statistics. This is comparable to associating a human being's growth in terms of years with maturity and responsible adulthood. Economic growth is a function of numbers, hence it does not fully reflect wealth distribution or observable advancements in measures of quality of life. The National Unity Platform (NUP) has continuously argued the reasoning and policy suggestions that have been supported by the Bureau of Statistics' findings, which harshly refute your statements.
As a result, your assertion that Uganda's economy will reach the half-trillion dollar threshold "in a few years" is the height of fabrication and lying. You only need to take a quick glance at the URA's difficulties in collecting income over the past few quarters and the high rates of SME mortality to see that this estimate is unfounded.
The truth is typically succinct, so I don't need to elaborate on these obvious issues the way you did after nearly 40 years in power when you penned about 30 pages to justify your "successes"! You should know everything you need to know just by the fact that you even felt the need to 'highlight' for the nation your purported triumphs.
In light of the facts I have provided, I will therefore draw the following conclusion: It is the height of irony and hypocrisy that you began your speech with a Biblical quotation from the Common Book of Prayer. I wonder if making that statement didn't make you feel guilty or contradict yourself.
You, Sir, are the one who did what you shouldn't have done and left undone what you should have. You are not true to yourself. Just give yourself a good, long look in the mirror.
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