Congratulations on a successful CHOGM
Dec 02, 2007
THE CHOGM that ended on Sunday November 25, 2007, was preceded by Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth’s State visit to Uganda, which started on Wednesday, November 21, 2007. Both events were successfully held. According to the comments that I kept hearing in ou
By Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
THE CHOGM that ended on Sunday November 25, 2007, was preceded by Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth’s State visit to Uganda, which started on Wednesday, November 21, 2007. Both events were successfully held. According to the comments that I kept hearing in our meetings and the expressions of the public in the media — this was the most successful and well-organised CHOGM ever held. Since I have attended many CHOGMs, I can also confirm this.
It was, of course, not difficult for the NRM Government to host such an event given our proven capacity to organise events. There are, however, groups linked to negative forces in Uganda that try to eclipse the time-tested capacity of the NRM to handle big issues, through the newspapers and radios here in Uganda and deceiving foreigners abroad. I, however, had no doubt that we would hold a very successful CHOGM, given our long experience in organisation and the good performance of our economy, the sabotage by the negative elements in the 6th Parliament that delayed Bujagali hydro-power dam notwithstanding.
It was only a question of dealing with the following issues:
Securing enough money to upgrade the infrastructure in the form of roads;
Making electricity supply reliable;
Ensuring constant water supply;
Ensuring that we get enough money to up-grade security equipment since some of the leaders coming here could potentially be targets of terrorism because of the world conflicts they are involved in;
The private sector providing enough accommodation in terms of hotel beds;
Up-grading the ICT infrastructure through the construction of the backbone that would make it easy to convey phones and news reports quickly and copiously;
Dealing with the endless lies told by the Besigye group to the foreigners about Uganda because, according to FDC, unless they are in power, Uganda should not function or prosper at all; and,
Finally, some of the Western countries seem to easily believe anything negative about Africa, even when it has no logic.
Let me first start with Kizza Besigye’s lies amplified by those in the West that are quick to believe anything bad about Africa even when it has no logic. The idea of hosting CHOGM first came from Don MacKinnon when he came for the Smart Partnership Meeting in Munyonyo in 2001, soon after the elections of that year. He liked the setting of Munyonyo and asked me: “Why don’t you host CHOGM?†As all of you should know, our foreign policy is characterised by concentric rings: East Africa, first ring; COMESA, second ring; Africa, third ring; and International Affairs, fourth ring with the Commonwealth being the first element in that ring.
However, just like I told Her Majesty in 1987 and, as I repeated recently, the Commonwealth is unique. It is the only international organisation in which I do not have to speak through interpreters. That is quite a relief and interesting; it gives the Organisation great potential. Even in the African Union (AU), we speak through interpreters. Nevertheless, I had never thought of hosting CHOGM until Don MacKinnon brought it up. I said: “Why not? We would.’ Nigeria, however, applied for hosting CHOGM 2003 and, in Abuja, we agreed that Malta would host CHOGM 2005 and Uganda would host CHOGM 2007.
However, due to the lies by some elements in Uganda and the eagerness with which some quarters in the Western world swallow all illogical stories about Africa, there were some murmurs at Malta that Uganda may not be a good venue because the Police in Uganda had arrested Besigye, had used tear gas, etc. The other Commonwealth leaders with whom I had interacted intensely on many topics such as trade, etc, could not buy these stories. Therefore, Kampala as the venue for CHOGM 2007, was re-affirmed. Even after this, negative delegations from Uganda were being sent to London to lobby the different centres to switch the venue from Kampala to some other venue. How irresponsible these Ugandan negative groups are!! They did not care about the cohesion of the Commonwealth because Uganda could not have been thus tantalised without negative consequences for the Commonwealth; about the interests of the private sector in Uganda that had so heavily invested in hotels; etc. What propels them is just greed for power. Even the power centres in London they were reporting us to, started seeing through the lack of patriotism of these groups. Hence, even on this external front, given the incredible record of the NRM in causing Uganda’s recovery, it was not a wise investment for these non-patriotic groups to imagine that they could scare away the world from Uganda.
Amazingly, even when CHOGM was in progress in Kampala, Besigye, with a handful of people, was not content with the big demonstration space the Police had set aside for them at the Kololo Airstrip; Besigye wanted to come to the Constitutional Square to disrupt the smooth running of CHOGM activities. The Police simply did not allow him and he could not.
The turn up of the Heads of State, Government and other delegates was excellent: 48 delegations out of 53 turned up for the Summit; of the 48, 16 were Heads of State and Government (mainly from Africa) and 21 were Heads of Government who came from elsewhere, Prime Ministers, including the Prime Ministers of powerful Commonwealth countries such as India, Britain, Canada, New-Zealand, Malaysia, Malta, etc. The Presidents, apart from the African Presidents, included those from Sri Lanka, Cyprus, etc. There ends the story of Besigye and his unpatriotic group.
Coming back to the four other factors:
Infrastructure;
Security;
Accommodation; and
ICT infrastructure.
All together, we spent sh276b on CHOGM activities in the financial years 2006/07 and 2007/08. These involved repairing Entebbe roads and the roads in Nakasero and Kololo, some support for the private hotels through co-investment; up-grading the security infrastructure such as the radar units, X-ray machines at the airports and in hotels, dealing with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, other specialised equipment against hidden bombs in walls, under-ground or in trucks, etc; building State House so that we have a suitable place for conferences and other State functions rather than in hotels or at the airport.
Soon after the elections last year, I held a Cabinet retreat at Statistics House with all the newly appointed Ministers and Ministers of State, in order to sensitise them and to direct them so as to ensure that the budgets for 2006/07 and 2007/08 are focused. The weakness I normally encounter among Africans in their planning is trying to be everywhere and ending up being nowhere. The NRM/NRA overcame this problem long ago during our wars of resistance. We always focus. In the early days of our resistance we focused on capturing guns from the enemy and we, therefore, only fought battles that would yield guns and avoided those that would not.
When I went outside to solicit for solidarity, we only asked for guns and bullets, but not for money, clothes, radio stations for propaganda, etc. You would get our soldiers almost naked but armed. This was one factor that ensured our victory. However, many Ugandan officials and other actors do not get this point. Mao Tse Tung exhorted us never to strike out with both arms in two opposite directions; but to concentrate our energies on one target and score a decisive victory. When we were fighting, we never fought battles of routing the enemy but of annihilation. Therefore, in this mould of mind, I proposed to the Cabinet and they agreed that the following two financial years we do two sets of actions: set of action number one — we should provide all the money needed for the following activities: energy — that is how Bujagali has started on time and we have been able to subsidise the very expensive diesel-generated electricity; Universal Secondary Education (USE) to start on time as it did; reconstruction of State House, solely by our own money as opposed to hawking it around for funding from China, etc; Defence and, especially, Air-defence activities (Air-force, radars etc; the other security equipment already alluded to); and the CHOGM activities already enumerated above. The second set of actions was to maintain all other sector budgets as per the levels of the previous budget of the 2005/6 financial year.
Once the money was provided for, the rest was mere implementation and I had no doubt in my mind that CHOGM would be a success. We had to have many meetings so as to pass on our knowledge to the younger people on matters of security and organisation.
The Commonwealth Secretariat, especially, Mrs. Florence Mugasha, were very useful in refining the implementation on account of her inspection tours. Some of those blinded by prejudice keep demeaning the capacity of NRM. They point to pot-holes here and there, etc. What they forget is that very early in our administration we opted for developing our Human Resource through Universal Primary Education (UPE) and now Universal Secodary Education. Each year on UPE alone we spend about Uganda sh403b. Had we diverted this into building roads, all the roads in the country would be tarmacked by now. What is the use of having tarmack roads, but having 60% of all the children in the country not going to school?
What has Uganda benefited from the meeting? A lot!! First of all, all the money we spent was to build our infrastructure, e.g. roads. I have long instructed the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor of Kampala that I want the city to have only the following elements: buildings, paved walkways, grassed road embankments and tarmack roads.
I do not want to see bare patches of naked soil in Kampala. Therefore, those who build houses must ensure that the front of their houses or shops are cemented or tarmacked. They should not leave bare patches. If we do that, there will be no dust and no mud during the rainy season. It is this dust that partly, as mud during the rainy season, blocks the drainage channels and causes floods. The other damage to the City is throwing buveera, sweet-banana peelings or throwing the chewings of sugar-cane (ebikambi) on the streets. These practices should stop! The cameras installed in the city should be used to capture those who do so and arrest them. The radios should be used by the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor to sensitise people about this. Therefore, a part of our city is now clean! Thanks to CHOGM!
Quite a bit of money came into the country. The hotels such as Sheraton, Speke Resort Munyonyo, etc, were full; that meant money. I even heard the Nakasero Market was busy with many customers. Most important of all, however, was informing outsiders about Uganda. Many of the leaders did not know how much Uganda had recovered. They were really surprised and many told me so. The Gross Domestic Product of Uganda, using the purchasing power parity (ppp), is now $52.9b. If all of you embrace the cause of value addition, so that we no longer export unprocessed raw materials but finished products, this economy, in a very short time, can grow by a factor of maybe 10. This will bring our economy, then, to $520b (ppp) — that is about the size of the economy of Malaysia currently. To achieve this, we need to constantly work on energy (Bujagali, Karuma, Isimba, Ayago, etc). Working with Kenya and Tanzania, we also need to work on the transport to the sea.
With this exposure, we have already struck understandings with some external actors from UK, India, Malaysia, etc, to come in for value addition. All our people involved must, therefore, move promptly: the licensing officials, the ones who provide utilities, the ones who provide work permits, etc. Anybody found wanting will have action taken against him/her promptly.
I again congratulate all the Ugandans that played a role in the CHOGM events and I thank the outsiders that gave us a chance to showcase Uganda by visiting us.
The writer is the President of Uganda
THE CHOGM that ended on Sunday November 25, 2007, was preceded by Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom and Head of the Commonwealth’s State visit to Uganda, which started on Wednesday, November 21, 2007. Both events were successfully held. According to the comments that I kept hearing in our meetings and the expressions of the public in the media — this was the most successful and well-organised CHOGM ever held. Since I have attended many CHOGMs, I can also confirm this.
It was, of course, not difficult for the NRM Government to host such an event given our proven capacity to organise events. There are, however, groups linked to negative forces in Uganda that try to eclipse the time-tested capacity of the NRM to handle big issues, through the newspapers and radios here in Uganda and deceiving foreigners abroad. I, however, had no doubt that we would hold a very successful CHOGM, given our long experience in organisation and the good performance of our economy, the sabotage by the negative elements in the 6th Parliament that delayed Bujagali hydro-power dam notwithstanding.
It was only a question of dealing with the following issues:
Let me first start with Kizza Besigye’s lies amplified by those in the West that are quick to believe anything bad about Africa even when it has no logic. The idea of hosting CHOGM first came from Don MacKinnon when he came for the Smart Partnership Meeting in Munyonyo in 2001, soon after the elections of that year. He liked the setting of Munyonyo and asked me: “Why don’t you host CHOGM?†As all of you should know, our foreign policy is characterised by concentric rings: East Africa, first ring; COMESA, second ring; Africa, third ring; and International Affairs, fourth ring with the Commonwealth being the first element in that ring.
However, just like I told Her Majesty in 1987 and, as I repeated recently, the Commonwealth is unique. It is the only international organisation in which I do not have to speak through interpreters. That is quite a relief and interesting; it gives the Organisation great potential. Even in the African Union (AU), we speak through interpreters. Nevertheless, I had never thought of hosting CHOGM until Don MacKinnon brought it up. I said: “Why not? We would.’ Nigeria, however, applied for hosting CHOGM 2003 and, in Abuja, we agreed that Malta would host CHOGM 2005 and Uganda would host CHOGM 2007.
However, due to the lies by some elements in Uganda and the eagerness with which some quarters in the Western world swallow all illogical stories about Africa, there were some murmurs at Malta that Uganda may not be a good venue because the Police in Uganda had arrested Besigye, had used tear gas, etc. The other Commonwealth leaders with whom I had interacted intensely on many topics such as trade, etc, could not buy these stories. Therefore, Kampala as the venue for CHOGM 2007, was re-affirmed. Even after this, negative delegations from Uganda were being sent to London to lobby the different centres to switch the venue from Kampala to some other venue. How irresponsible these Ugandan negative groups are!! They did not care about the cohesion of the Commonwealth because Uganda could not have been thus tantalised without negative consequences for the Commonwealth; about the interests of the private sector in Uganda that had so heavily invested in hotels; etc. What propels them is just greed for power. Even the power centres in London they were reporting us to, started seeing through the lack of patriotism of these groups. Hence, even on this external front, given the incredible record of the NRM in causing Uganda’s recovery, it was not a wise investment for these non-patriotic groups to imagine that they could scare away the world from Uganda.
Amazingly, even when CHOGM was in progress in Kampala, Besigye, with a handful of people, was not content with the big demonstration space the Police had set aside for them at the Kololo Airstrip; Besigye wanted to come to the Constitutional Square to disrupt the smooth running of CHOGM activities. The Police simply did not allow him and he could not.
The turn up of the Heads of State, Government and other delegates was excellent: 48 delegations out of 53 turned up for the Summit; of the 48, 16 were Heads of State and Government (mainly from Africa) and 21 were Heads of Government who came from elsewhere, Prime Ministers, including the Prime Ministers of powerful Commonwealth countries such as India, Britain, Canada, New-Zealand, Malaysia, Malta, etc. The Presidents, apart from the African Presidents, included those from Sri Lanka, Cyprus, etc. There ends the story of Besigye and his unpatriotic group.
Coming back to the four other factors:
All together, we spent sh276b on CHOGM activities in the financial years 2006/07 and 2007/08. These involved repairing Entebbe roads and the roads in Nakasero and Kololo, some support for the private hotels through co-investment; up-grading the security infrastructure such as the radar units, X-ray machines at the airports and in hotels, dealing with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats, other specialised equipment against hidden bombs in walls, under-ground or in trucks, etc; building State House so that we have a suitable place for conferences and other State functions rather than in hotels or at the airport.
Soon after the elections last year, I held a Cabinet retreat at Statistics House with all the newly appointed Ministers and Ministers of State, in order to sensitise them and to direct them so as to ensure that the budgets for 2006/07 and 2007/08 are focused. The weakness I normally encounter among Africans in their planning is trying to be everywhere and ending up being nowhere. The NRM/NRA overcame this problem long ago during our wars of resistance. We always focus. In the early days of our resistance we focused on capturing guns from the enemy and we, therefore, only fought battles that would yield guns and avoided those that would not.
When I went outside to solicit for solidarity, we only asked for guns and bullets, but not for money, clothes, radio stations for propaganda, etc. You would get our soldiers almost naked but armed. This was one factor that ensured our victory. However, many Ugandan officials and other actors do not get this point. Mao Tse Tung exhorted us never to strike out with both arms in two opposite directions; but to concentrate our energies on one target and score a decisive victory. When we were fighting, we never fought battles of routing the enemy but of annihilation. Therefore, in this mould of mind, I proposed to the Cabinet and they agreed that the following two financial years we do two sets of actions: set of action number one — we should provide all the money needed for the following activities: energy — that is how Bujagali has started on time and we have been able to subsidise the very expensive diesel-generated electricity; Universal Secondary Education (USE) to start on time as it did; reconstruction of State House, solely by our own money as opposed to hawking it around for funding from China, etc; Defence and, especially, Air-defence activities (Air-force, radars etc; the other security equipment already alluded to); and the CHOGM activities already enumerated above. The second set of actions was to maintain all other sector budgets as per the levels of the previous budget of the 2005/6 financial year.
Once the money was provided for, the rest was mere implementation and I had no doubt in my mind that CHOGM would be a success. We had to have many meetings so as to pass on our knowledge to the younger people on matters of security and organisation.
The Commonwealth Secretariat, especially, Mrs. Florence Mugasha, were very useful in refining the implementation on account of her inspection tours. Some of those blinded by prejudice keep demeaning the capacity of NRM. They point to pot-holes here and there, etc. What they forget is that very early in our administration we opted for developing our Human Resource through Universal Primary Education (UPE) and now Universal Secodary Education. Each year on UPE alone we spend about Uganda sh403b. Had we diverted this into building roads, all the roads in the country would be tarmacked by now. What is the use of having tarmack roads, but having 60% of all the children in the country not going to school?
What has Uganda benefited from the meeting? A lot!! First of all, all the money we spent was to build our infrastructure, e.g. roads. I have long instructed the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor of Kampala that I want the city to have only the following elements: buildings, paved walkways, grassed road embankments and tarmack roads.
I do not want to see bare patches of naked soil in Kampala. Therefore, those who build houses must ensure that the front of their houses or shops are cemented or tarmacked. They should not leave bare patches. If we do that, there will be no dust and no mud during the rainy season. It is this dust that partly, as mud during the rainy season, blocks the drainage channels and causes floods. The other damage to the City is throwing buveera, sweet-banana peelings or throwing the chewings of sugar-cane (ebikambi) on the streets. These practices should stop! The cameras installed in the city should be used to capture those who do so and arrest them. The radios should be used by the Minister of Local Government and the Mayor to sensitise people about this. Therefore, a part of our city is now clean! Thanks to CHOGM!
Quite a bit of money came into the country. The hotels such as Sheraton, Speke Resort Munyonyo, etc, were full; that meant money. I even heard the Nakasero Market was busy with many customers. Most important of all, however, was informing outsiders about Uganda. Many of the leaders did not know how much Uganda had recovered. They were really surprised and many told me so. The Gross Domestic Product of Uganda, using the purchasing power parity (ppp), is now $52.9b. If all of you embrace the cause of value addition, so that we no longer export unprocessed raw materials but finished products, this economy, in a very short time, can grow by a factor of maybe 10. This will bring our economy, then, to $520b (ppp) — that is about the size of the economy of Malaysia currently. To achieve this, we need to constantly work on energy (Bujagali, Karuma, Isimba, Ayago, etc). Working with Kenya and Tanzania, we also need to work on the transport to the sea.
With this exposure, we have already struck understandings with some external actors from UK, India, Malaysia, etc, to come in for value addition. All our people involved must, therefore, move promptly: the licensing officials, the ones who provide utilities, the ones who provide work permits, etc. Anybody found wanting will have action taken against him/her promptly.
I again congratulate all the Ugandans that played a role in the CHOGM events and I thank the outsiders that gave us a chance to showcase Uganda by visiting us.
The writer is the President of Uganda