There’s no school for political leadership!

SIR— Ugandans are familiar with aspirants to political office who find themselves “qualified” at one election and “unqualified” at another which requires the same qualifications for the same post. Thus Nasser Sebaggala was “qualified” for mayor in 1997, but “unqualified” for president in 2001 although the educational qualifications are the same for both positions. Chairpersons of districts, and MPs were disqualified by the Electoral Commission on the advice of Uganda National Examination Board, during the Parliamentary and local council elections. A few of these have been reinstated by court order after winning election petitions.Surely the time has come for us to take a hard look at these educational requirements for political office: Do we really need them? I say we do not for the following reasons:When we imposed an educational requirement for political offices, we lost sight of the fact that there is no school in our educational system (or anywhere for that matter) for training of political leaders.We have got schools for training doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers and other professionals, but where is the school for training somebody to become an MP, a minister or president?The fact of the matter is that such schools do not exist and it is both futile and silly to pretend that somebody can be trained to be president or mayor. Sir Winston Churchhill, as the world knows, flanked his exams and left school without an A-level or its equivalent, yet he lived to become one of the greatest statesmen and leaders of the 20th century. Here at home, we have the giants who steered this country from the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, men like Sir Apolo Kaggwa, Stanislaus Mugwanya, Nuhu Mbogo, Semei Kakungulu, all of whom never went to formal school, and their immediate successors like S.W. Kulubya, Paulo Kavuma, Badru Kakungulu. Can we honestly say that these men would be unfit to sit in Parliament or to be chairmen of district councils?One of the more serious mischiefs in our present system is the provision for an “equivalent” which, apart from being potentially open to abuse and corruption, opens the floodgates for all sorts of queer results.It is salutary to reflect that when we are considering, for example, admission to university we do not provide for “equivalents”. Thus for university entrance we must have O and A-levels of certain grades. We do not admit people to study medicine or law at Makerere on the basis that they possess a diploma in shipping or something like that.The truth is, as I said earlier, no one has yet designed an educational test or qualification the possession of which would automatically qualify its possessor to be a successful mayor, MP, minister or president.The greatest quality for political leaders at least in democratic or elective systems, is their capacity to convince a large number of the population and persuade them to take a definite course of action.In this sense, Hajji Sebaggala was better qualified to be president even without submitting him to the ordeal of going back to school at his age, than some of those who were declared properly nominated at the recently concluded presidential elections.I would therefore submit that we drop the educational requirement as one of the qualifications for political office. Rather, we should leave the whole thing to be decided by the voters. If we trust an illiterate voter to be able to decide who can be president, it seems to me somewhat of a contradiction to insist on an education test for the candidate.Abu MayanjaKampala