Dear Ugandans,

Today's Monitor newspaper reports that Museveni has reacted angrily to their earlier article about the plight of the Ugandan civil servants. He is said to have threatened to soon "sort out" errant journalists and economic saboteurs who are turning the country into a laughing stock. His utterances should be dismissed with all the contempt one can muster, and be considered another vain attempt at intimidation.

It is not the country per se that is turning into a laughing stock, it is Museveni who is a laughing stock not only in Uganda and Africa, but also throughout the world.

This is a man who shot his way into power, killing many tens of thousands of Ugandans along the way while shifting the blame onto past leaders he now insults as 'swine'. The longer he stays in power, the more his past comes to the fore to haunt him and the more people come to realize that his so-called talk of fundamental change was the empty talk of a man who was just too excited by the things he had just 'fallen' into.

So as the reign of dictator Museveni comes rapidly towards its end, you see a confused old sick man full of shame. He is getting bitter, angry and more erratic by the day as his failures and skeletons are being exposed and making him a laughing stock.

Instead of heaping accolades on Museveni, Ugandans are increasingly remembering with nostalgia, the Amins and Obotes of this world.

In the last one month, he has blamed his problems (the Aya hotel and now the issue of civil servant's welfare being poor as compared to other better organized neighbors, even Congo of all places) on the press. The press are reporting simple, non-controversial facts. What would he say if they started publishing the dirty but true stories which they now fear to?

He should address the issues raised by the press and the people and stop his blame games, Ugandans are not fools any more. We can no longer afford to put up with his lies which appear to be on the increase as he his desperation grows, trying to distort history which has now judged him as one of the worst leaders of our time.

Yoweri who should have been a "fountain of honor" has unfortunately turned the state into a den of thieves. Like the Kiganda saying, "bamusede mu katale kati ayomba ne kubo", he is like a man who was cheated in the market but is now quarrelling with the road instead.

No sane person takes him seriously any more that is why you see this rampant theft, corruption and mismanagement in the public sector, the army, NRM, in state house because more and more people are coming to realize that Yoweri is a thoroughly corrupt man who has no moral authority to condemn any crime since he is not separable from crime itself.

This is a fellow who found the country with the best civil servants and government institutions working and now what does the country have, a rotten civil service, which he cannot even pay.

This chap took over a working state, and now we have no state called Uganda where people are proud to be called Ugandans. Instead the traumatised citizens have reacted by seeking refuge in our tribes. Some are now grouping together in small clans for a sense of identity, and to feel safe against the marauding state that Museveni let loose on us.

This fellow is not fit to have been a president in the first place because his love for this country that gave him sanctuary when he needed refuge has always remained a doubt, instead his selfishness is there for all to see.

This is a fellow who,

• Allows Mulago Hospital and all other main hospitals to deteriorate and decay, becoming death traps. People go there to suffer and die, in addition to increasing their chances of catching some new infection. Meanwhile he flies his family to European hospitals at our expense, and spends a further 80 million dollars building a State House. It is the only good building you see in Entebbe, so now he lives in splendour in a run down town, like a hick who drives a Bugati but lives in a slum. Talk of backwardness.
   
• Allows Kilembe mines to go waste and now talks of building oil refineries, talk of day dreaming. Uganda has no capacity to process simple agricultural products and you talk of moving to complex oil refineries? What shall we be promised next, a space program when we don't even have a single decent highway?
   
• Destroyed Uganda Airlines, all that he cares about are the presidential jet and helicopter. Now Ugandans have to fly at the mercy of Kenya Airways and Air Tanzania, even Rwanda has an airline. And he daily sings about having built Uganda?
   
• As he watched, what was once the industrial town of Uganda, Jinja, has become a sorry looking, semi-slum rusty town as the industries have gone to waste. His brilliant solution has been to invite Indians to build warehouse which he now calls factories. Yet in the short time he was president, Obote had rehabilitated most of these industries and Ugandans were running them well.
   
• Well knowing that agriculture, namely coffee was a major industry in the country, he nevertheless saw to it that this important sector on which millions of livelihoods depended dies. The major coffee processing plant in Bugoloobi was turning into a sweat shop making clothes for export. Which as we know also went burst, having been turned into another opportunity to squander tax payers money thanks to his wisdom and vision.
   
• Supervised the dismantling of public transportation infrastructure, from roads, railway lines to service providers like Uganda Transport Company (UTC), People's Transport Company and Uganda Railways Corporation. What we now have are these dangerous, dirty, innefficient ramshackle private mini-buses in which incidentally for your own information, he has a subtantial interest as an owner.
   
• Stood by and even facilitated the rip off of Uganda Commercial Bank (the largest indigenous Ugandan bank) to be robbed by his brother (an extension of himself). The former Uganda Commercial Bank Tower is now a shopping arcade! And what happened to all the other UCB assets?
   
• Allows what was one of the best Universities in Africa to go to waste. Uganda had one of the best education systems in Africa and see what Yoweri has done, to our kids, turning the country into an ocean of semi-illiterates whose education is not recognized by anyone anywhere even in Kampala.

I could go on for pages. Anyway, since his favorite method has always been to "sort out" those who stand in his way through intimidation, maiming and killing, he can ban the formal newspapers from operating but for us Ugandans who love our country, we have found informal news media like Radio Katwe which is dear to us and he has no way of sorting them out. Instead he is being sorted out by them.

For God and my country.

  Nov 26 2008

  Nov 27 2008

 29 Nov 2008