It’s a smart dialogue!

By John Nagenda MANY sworn Ugandan enemies of the Movement government (although perhaps “enemies” gives an overstated sense of their importance in this hopeless endeavour), must be shedding bitter tears onto their breakfast of cold cassava this wonderful morning. For this evening, before an expected score of presidents, two vice-presidents, four prime ministers, many first ladies, the Commonwealth secretary-general and other dignitaries, President Museveni and First Lady Janet, will be opening the Global 2001/ Smart Partnership International Dialogue. It is to “enhance the Climate for Foreign Direct Investment”. Smart is an acronym for: Sustainable, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely. Well, you asked me! To think that it is our little country hosting all this makes your columnist’s eyes water. Will the eyes of this naughty world be here? Don’t hold your breath. This is Good News, as opposed to the Bad News which is always expected of Africa by the media. A couple of paragraphs - if we are lucky - and a sound-bite or two, is what we will get. And even those will have a parenthesis on the deadly plague of Aids. We care not. Joint Dialogue Convener Mihaela Smith (our Ruhakana Rugunda is the ballast to her Miria Matembe-like energy) wants the Dialogue to be as informal as possible. All very well for her! Your columnist doubts he will find the chutzpah to do a high-five with any of the presidents, let alone his own. * * * Back in the year Dot, actually in 1956 or 7, I was introduced to the works of the Irish dramatist, Sean O’Casey. If it was ‘56 it was during my last year at Budo, if ‘57 in my first at Makerere. The line I found irresistibly funny was: “It stank all the way to Dublin”, meaning that it was heavily suspicious or questionable. If at Budo, my co-chortler was Michael Mulyanti; if at Makerere a most argumentative Tanzanian called Ben, who has moved on in life. Whichever one, when the opportunity arose, we would turn to the other and say in what we fondly imagined to be Irish accents, “Doesn’t it stink all the way to Dublin?” All right, perhaps we have grown more sophisticated with the passing years! But when the risible, not to say stinky, Report from the (so-called) UN Panel of Experts first hit our consciousness, I found myself quoting the O’Casey line. Even better, when I hit the BBC airwaves the same evening, with smoke coming out of my nose I was able to pour scorn on the insubstantial, gossipy, hearsay Report. As for the alleged experts, I asked to be told what was their expertise. It is all water under the bridge now. Following the visit to Uganda and the region of a heavyweight team of Security Council ambassadors, a new panel is in place; soon to meet leading Ugandan players in the Congo drama, including the President. The Chair of the earlier panel, the twinkling Madame Ba-N'Daw, has been put out to, admittedly lusher, pasture. The UN is covering up its blushes as best it can. But Thursday saw President Museveni appear, by his own invitation, before the Uganda-appointed Porter commission, which is looking minutely at the panel allegations. Museveni was a mulokole (a ‘saved’ person) in his youth, and, believe me, even when it fades, that state never completely disappears. So it is with our President; he always likes to confess the truth. When I was at the Human Rights Commission, he invited us to Entebbe State House, so that we could quiz him about allegations which had been brought against him by some Muslims in Ankole. He told us to ask him anything. We did; it was like, as we say in Luganda, okusiindika omunya mu ssubi, sending a lizard into thatch. How we enjoyed it! Recently he unburdened himself to the Ssebutinde commission into the junk helicopter saga. On all three occasions, which I was lucky enough to attend, cynic though I am by nature and inclination, I saw a man fighting to make sure that he told what he knew. Show me many other leaders who would do the same; indeed who would voluntarily put their heads into lions’ mouths. Would you? * * * Spare a thought for Third World missions overseas. Envoys have been known to take up taxi driving - they have the vehicles for it! One of our High Commissioners thought he had solved the penury problem by planning to sell the official residency. Out of this he would pay off debts, find a new house for himself and flats for his officers. The Auditor General (to say nothing of some much higher up) would have none of it. Sales of capital assets do not form part of Appropriation-In-Aid and should therefore be banked on the Consolidated Fund Account. And in any case there would first have to be a board of survey appointed by the Treasury Secretary to agree to any such sale. Ouch! If the High Commissioner has already used lawyers in the transaction he will soon start sweating buckets. Farther afield, news reached me that Israeli tanks had raided Jenin, a town on the West Bank under Palestinian control. What here stuck in the craw was for the attack to be called one of Israel’s “most daring raids of the Palestinian uprising”. Daring in what way? What tools do the Palestinians possess to stop such an attack? Suicide bombers heavily camouflaged as flower children of the 1960s? How hilarious! www.onemansweek.com jnagenda@afsat.com