Maintain focus to turn challenges into opportunities

Aug 09, 2011

TO paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian military theorist, a good leader requires the courage to act and intellect to discern the broad picture from a challenging, foggy, uncertain environment.

Kintu Nyago

TO paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian military theorist, a good leader requires the courage to act and intellect to discern the broad picture from a challenging, foggy, uncertain environment.

In our context of the current global economic crisis, worsened by a prolonged regional drought and our being a non industrial oil importing economy, Clausewitz’s crucial qualities are manifesting themselves in President Museveni’s, who, to his advantage, also happens to be an able communicator.

Kizza Besigye, the FDC and the leaders of the UPC and DP had attempted, through their infamous so-called “Walk to Work”, to derail Government’s political and economic programmes, by hiring hoodlums and sections of the local press to create an impression that the NRM Government was collapsing, for being illegitimate, incompetent and unresponsive, amidst an acute economic crisis.

With their incoherent proposed lunatic sounding solutions being the abdication of a government that just recently secured a huge national 70% national mandate, this in addition to the abolition of most taxes!

Matters worsened when international news networks, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Al-Jazeera and others regurgitated without any meaningful critical analysis, Besigye’s above pathetic narrative to the global community.

This being atypical of their usually balanced modus operandi, when reporting on Europe, North America and elsewhere outside this continent. When reporting on Africa, their apparent motto seems to be anything goes!

Had the NRM government succumbed to Besigye’s populist, cynical pressure and that of the foreign news media and other biased and ill informed commentators, then Uganda would have kissed its hard earned economic recovery goodbye.

Many an African country, in the 1970s and 1980s, during what, in scholarship, is now termed the African Economic Crisis, got entangled into a deep economic mire and collapse through, inter alia, having leaders who unfortunately succumbed to populist pressures from tiny but organised urban pressure groups, that vocally and violently complained about the high cost of living.

For instance, amidst the collapse of global copper and other raw materials, Mzee Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, then a mono commodity economy, succumbed to trade union and other urban group’s pressure to subsidise consumption and food prices so as to appease the people of Lusaka and the Copper Belt! The effect was devastating. As night follows day, the Zambian economy collapsed, and Kaunda and the United Independence Party (UNIP) lost power.

When discussing the demise of the Obote II regime, most analysts, unfortunately, miss out the crucial role of the dimension played by its economic mis-management policies. For in the 1984/85 Fiscal Year, Dr. Milton Obote, president and concurrent minister of foreign affairs and of finance, panicked, resorted to populist reasoning and threw fiscal discipline out of the window.

That is, by increasing by more than 300%, the salaries and allowances of the mainly urban-based, then parasitic and bloated public service!
This policy, contrary to Obote’s calculations, backfired, harvesting a runaway inflation of 141%, a rise from a more modest 20% rate.

Also the IMF and World Bank froze their support, the economy collapsed with the regime losing whatever fragile legitimacy it hitherto held, baring in mind the 1980 elections fiasco. All this fed into the hatching of the two Okello’s 1985 coup and the NRM’s eventual coming to power in 1986.

Against this background, Museveni’s principled position on the economy has to be applauded and supported by the well meaning Ugandan elite and foreign well-wishers. We need not succumb to populist pressure, but rather continue to channel budget support into road and railway construction, electricity generation and the NAADS programme.

We need to utilise this crisis as an opportunity to galvanise national creativity and support and harness opportunities from it.

For instance, the overwhelming majority of Ugandans are rural based and are located in the subsistence economy. With political guidance, these stand to benefit from the high global food prices, through engaging in increased production.

Additionally, the Kampala compradorial merchant class, whose economic mainstay has been the importation of foreign commodities, requires to be guided into becoming a national bourgeoisie. So that they apply their capital, entrepreneurial instincts and experience into local production and value addition, for the domestic and export markets.

Given that man tends to reap what he sows, Ugandans require to consider their having elected President Museveni and the NRM with a large national mandate in the recent February General Elections as an opportunity. For we have in place a capable leadership, at the helm of a strong national political movement and with a huge truly national mandate.
These are the fundamentals for the required political stability and guidance.
Museveni and the NRM have not only created political and macro economic stability, they have also grown, by more than 10 times from its 1972 level, and diversified our economy.

Additionally their foreign policy based on good neighborliness and regional integration, have created regional market opportunities for Ugandan products.

Hence increased production and regional trade would considerably contribute to surmounting our current economic challenges.

Deputy Principal Personal Secretary to the President

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