President Museveni’s State of the
Nation Address Was Full of Contradictions of His Own Beliefs
Yesterday 7th
June 2023Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni delivered the 2022-2023 state of the
nation speech at the Kololo grounds where he made some insights about the state
of the socio-economic, political and security situation of the country.
Interestingly,
the president spent almost 80% of his three hour speech on the state of the
economy in which he made some interesting revelations that also contradicted
his own long held views.
For instance,
Museveni reiterated his long held view that a society that is metamorphosing
into a first rate society has got less people dwelling in agriculture as their
main occupation. He qualified this point by giving figures in which he revealed
that the US, UK and most developed countries all have less than 2% of the average
population engaged in agriculture in contrast to the third world which has more
than 70%.
At the same
time he is the same man who has had a long held view that Ugandans should
engage more in agriculture by desisting from land fragmentation by taking
advantage of government programs like NAADS, operation wealth creation etc. In
fact he used the sam occasion to congratulate Gen Salim Saleh’s operation
wealth creation program for having lifted assize able percentage of Ugandans
from poverty through supply of seedlings, animal breeds and other
innovations-which are all agricultural-orientated in nature. This obviously
means that he still believes that agriculture is the way to go for his country.
This could mean that the president is not entirely convinced that agriculture
can transform society. And yet at the same time he contradicts this sentiment
by imploring Ugandans to engage in the same (agricultural) practice.
Some of us
think that the president should boldly assist Ugandans from agricultural practices
through deliberate programs by instituting programs that can create a conducive
environment for the urban folk to engage in wealth creation.
Some of the measures revolve around making
sure that his government institutes affordable tax regimes even offering tax
holidays to the urban dwellers, affordable power tariffs, deliver on the
infrastructural obligations of good roads, railways, waterways, etc. More
importantly the parish development model should have been dedicated to urban
dwellers to activate them into development to attract more Ugandans from rural
areas.
The
president seems oblivious of the fact that the Ugandan youths have already
embraced his view of moving out of agriculture by migrating to urban areas by
selling land to engage in services like boda-bodas, hawking. Unfortunately,
it’s his same NRM government that is frustrating Ugandans from metamorphosing
from agricultural practices.
But it goes
without saying that the NRM government doesn’t seem to have a well nurtured
policy on how to regulate the services sector.
They don’t seem
to know what to do with hawkers, the boda-bodas and the informal sector at
large. Instead Museveni has opted to play politics with these urban dwellers by
patronizing them by conscripting them into the Muhoozi and Jajja projects.
As a result
of this confusion, the informal sector and urban dweller in general is
surviving without paying taxes and any sort of regulation because he still
relies on state patronage.
Yet the best
alternative should have been to find a way to regulate the urban Ugandans,
create a conducive working environment for them and eventually find a way of conscripting
them into the taxation system so that they can have an input into the national
economy.
CONTRADICTING STATISTICS OF THE
STRATEGISTS
Another
shocking contradiction of the speech was that the president seemed to be at
variance with the written script that had been authored by officials from the ministry
of finance. He spent most of the time either contradicting or disagreeing with
the figures, statistics and agreed positions of his economic strategists.
Last year
Mr. Museveni shocked economic experts when he revealed that Uganda had achieved
middle income status, an assertion that his economic strategists and the World
Bank unanimously disagreed with. This time he revealed that the Ugandan
economists were under estimating the development of the economic progress being
made and picked out the milk sector which he claimed that had multiplied by
190%.
Incidentally,
Mr. Museveni passionately believes it’s {the milk output} is much more than
that 190%.. However, if the milk sector has developed at a tremendous pace,
what has your NRM done to tap that growth potential? Why has the extra supply
of milk not subsidized the prices of milk around the country-evidence actually
shows that the price of a one litter of milk is costing much more than ever
before at 2,400 per litter in most areas of Kampala.
Secondly,
why doesn’t the president talk about the possibility of instituting an industry
that can transform the milk into powder milk that can make Uganda a power house
in the milk industry on the continent?
GLOBAL CONTRADICTION
President
Museveni also insists that the economy will grow from the current USD 52bn to
USD55bn within the next twelve months.
However, he
quickly forgets that that projected growth may not arise because he has already
plunged the country into an economic crisis by signing the anti-gay bill last
month that incited the western powers to unleash sanctions that will have a
very negative effect on the economy.
The
president is oblivious of the fact that the sanctions from the donors will
obviously lead to a decline of the tourism sector-which the president praised
for having contributed tremendously to the national treasury according to the statistics;
Uganda generated around 518 million US dollars from the tourism sector and I known
to contribute almost 4% to the GDP.
Given the
fact that homosexuality was already a criminal offense in Uganda even before
this law was legislated upon this year,
the president should have desisted from assenting on it to maintain or protect
Uganda’s reputation as a free country for tourists all over the globe.
The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a
blogger, and social policy critic kamwadafred@gmail.com
