Uganda’s most corrupt president ever now talks of fighting corruption as IMF considers $900 million loan. Photo: Facebook.
Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni who stole elections from challenger, Member of Parliament Robert Kyagulanyi a.k.a. Bobi Wine has declared war on corruption yet again, 35 years into his misrule.
The same corrupt regime now awaits a decision by the IMF whether to approve a $900 million loan or not.
There is now talk that the children of his colleagues in the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party could be appointed to senior positions in government. The dictatorship is financed and sustained by about $2 billion annually from the U.S. and the EU. One can only imagine the escalating orgy of corruption if the children of the ruling elite are appointed to positions of power.
The dictator’s perverted logic is that since corruption is due to poverty, it’s better to appoint the children of the rich ruling elite—even though the wealth was accumulated by stealing public funds.
The now potbellied NRA politicians were lean men when they came out of the bush in 1986 at the end of the guerrilla war.
They donned tattered clothes and shoes. After installing themselves in power, Museveni and his colleagues began to loot the country mercilessly. Now some of them own secret offshore accounts.
Gen. Museveni himself was named as a beneficiary of a $1 million bribe payment in a U.S. federal court trial where his blown up photograph was displayed to jurors as exhibit 1510. A Chinese investor, Chi Ping Patrick Ho was convicted for bribing Museveni and his foreign minister Sam Kutesa. The first family has even plundered $5 million per month for years from the country’s national social security fund, according to one of his former ministers Zoe Bakoko Bakoru.
Uganda may have some of the best laws against corruption in the form of the Anti-Corruption Act 2019. But how can corruption be combated when the top leadership are the most corrupt?
Officially police are supposed to be enforcing the corruption laws. Yet dictator Museveni runs a fully-fledged anti-corruption Unit inside State House, manned by a military officer, Maj. Edith Nakalema.
This State House Anti-Corruption Unit must be a smoke screen. It was put in place to protect scandals of the first family. State House dictates who gets arrested and who is untouchable.
So this is what Uganda has today.
A despot who went to the bush to fight a legitimate government which he accused of being corrupt and for rigging elections. Once in power Museveni went on a stealing frenzy and became a serial election rigger.
The columnist can be reached via [email protected]
