Walk-to-Work has come back at a wrong time as opposition should focus on getting Mbabazi Out

Folks,
Please help me understand how walking will reduce prices. Yes the gov’t have mismanaged the economy and we have also been living on a false economy but walking can’t address these issues. Can it?

Yes we have an incompetent gov’t but don’t think that gov’t is made of other people and the opposition comprised of better people. The issues affecting Uganda go beyond the people in gov’t, we the whole society we are all messed, no single individual does anything write in Uganda. The whole society is a mess and I agree all this mess has been created by NRM but walking to walk will not transform society, KB himself has a petrol station, is he stealing fuel less? How many of those opposition MPs have business, have they reduced the prices?

So there is no quick fix to this problem, all the opposition would do is to put forward credible solutions to these problems. The parliament is the place for this, why did they spend all the energy on oil and not on the economy, can’t they still do the same for the economy. There is also the electricity issue, why can’t they raise these things which have solutions than use things like the economy which are a try and error thing, even these developed economies are struggling.

The last time I read bank of Uganda had raised interest rates, was this the best thing to do, what has KB said about this, has he produced an alternative fiscal policy? What is the shadow cabinet doing?

On the issue of sugar why have those same companies the Madivans who created this mess been allowed to also import forcing those who buy from them still to buy the imported sugar which is more expensive, and has the opposition said anything about this.

Why can’t we call these people in parliament and we ask them some questions, let us look at the accounts. There are ways an opposition can be effective but actually not endangering the lives of our people.

We have kids doing exams, and those in opposition can’t take those demonstrations near schools where their kids go, why then do they think this is the best time to organise something which has not immediate effect than to cause death. Yes we can argue it is the gov’t going to kill demonstrators true but can these demonstrations be organised at the right time, do you have to demonstrate to make your point, aren’t there other ways to do this.

Are you then telling us Museveni’s decision to go to war was the right one when he was not even cheated. Then why then should people say today they were mislead. Don’t you then think today this opposition may actually mislead our vulnerable people who have no hope? Police can’t actually shoot Besigye but they can shoot others to death, so are we saying the life our those who could be got in the cross fire worth less.

There is thinking that actually let us go on the streets then if we are killed the international world will come to our rescue, but haven’t we seen many people where that international world has left people to die. I think it happened in Kenya, and why should we open the imperialism thinking to ourselves when we can actually fight our own wars in our won ways.

No these opposition must think smarter than this and let them not think because they have these posts they have to think for all of us who have even opposed this regime before they even thought of doing so.

It is quite disappointing with the way some of these so call mbu leaders think. Today we have the gov’t on the back foot, people are looking for signatures to censure ministers then you see some who want to take some limelight come up with suicidal moves!

These Activists for change should know that we have the means to open proceeding against them if they lead our people to traps of death. Yes the gov’t would have a case to answer but even those who lead them to that trap must be answerable. If the examinations of our kids are intercepted with these activities still we have the means to seek compensation 

I’m not in doubt of the dire situation we find ourselves in but in seeking solutions we have to look at sustainable ways of doing this.
We can’t disrupt the future of our kids whose parents have toed hard to get these fees and have no other chance maybe to even afford their kids repeating the class.

This is my concern, that the timing is actually very wrong and not that gov’t is not getting bad headlines, it is actually on the back foot not seen before, so why can’t we continue with that momentum. What is being done now is historical and a precedent is being set, we can’t hijack it by killing the gov’t airwaves.

Our MPs both on the sides of the aisle are busy looking at sorting out these corrupt ministers and they will then go for the incompetent one, why don’t we give them chance to do that while we think of plan B. What is the rush really of this W2W?

Don’t think we are not in a dictatorship and when you are in a dictatorship you don’t ask why one shouldn’t be allowed to walk. No one is doing to allow you to walk and if you are to do it you must have plan B of how to counter what they plan to do to you while walking and if you don’t have one then it is really pointless to try. We have a brutal regime who can even use atomic bombs on its people, that is a fact, so don’t expect anything good, and since it is very clear that this brutal regime is going to respond like this, why then take them on when you can take it to the last man, and to be able to do this, one needs the support of the public. And once they don’t come on board then know you are not doing it right. People all want to support these walks and they have been doing so, but when people raise legitimate reason why it should happen now, one has to listen.

Yes we can talk back our country to the jungle days where those who wanted to go to the jungle were viewed as heroes but once they came out, what did they offer?

We can achieve democracy without actually shedding blood and that I know for sure, if we organise ourselves without always a few people wanting to take the headlines. If Museveni didn’t mind about the public opinion, then he would not have robbed banks to buy himself that support, which means he needs the public to be on his side, he knows it well once they are not, even the jets you have are useless.
I always tell people, one has to focus on beating Museveni using his own tricks, it is possible.

We have this corruption campaign, it now Him and Mbabazi against us, so why can’t we take it to the end and see who wins. He says Mbabazi will not leave, and we are saying enough is enough he will leave. Why can we take this fight to the last man before adding on another fight?

Doesn’t KB see that we have a battle ahead of us which we must win at all costs? This economy for a long time has been bad, I’m surprised people are just learning it. But we need that Mbabazi out and we must focus on getting him out and back to Kanungu, if it means him going with Museveni, that is their problem but he must go and let us focus on that for now.

 ISAAC BALAMU
UAH FORUMIST IN LONDON

It seems Andrew Mwenda Isn’t ready to become Uganda’s ‘Veronica Guerin’

17 Oct 2011 5 Comments

by semuwemba in Corruption, Legal issues, media in Uganda

Andrew Mwenda

Dear folks, What a week! What a month! What a year! Four powerful dictators in Africa have lost their power this year, the ‘Mahogany’(former Vice president) of Uganda selectively tested jail this month, and three powerful cabinet ministers have temporarily resigned their offices to allow the investigation of their hands in National tills over CHOGM and oil scandals. The surprise in all this has been journalist Andrew Mwenda’s public defense of the cabinet ministers involved in the oil corruption scams as he insists that the documents presented in parliament by Gerald Karuhanga, the Youth MP for Western Uganda, were forged. Mwenda and president Museveni hold the same view and have confessed that they have been investigating the matter for a while before the MP broke the camel’s bark.

Given how famous Andrew Mwenda is these days – or infamous, perhaps –it always amazes me how he leaves himself so open to revealing the kind of people he regularly conducts his investigative journalism with. In most of his radio talk shows, the statements such as ‘ when i met Museveni’ or ‘when i met Kagame’…. have become like a paracetamol on a headache. Mwenda expects Ugandans to just believe his words that the documents were forged just because he involved president Museveni and Uganda police in the investigation process. Phew! The documents were revealing information implicating Museveni’s ministers in oil corruption scandals, and the first place Mwenda went to for investigation was Museveni himself. In other words, Mwenda was kind enough to give Museveni a chance to investigate himself before he reports anything to Ugandans. Oh, what a kind man!

It is the job of any good journalist to challenge, question, investigate, and report their findings, but Menda had not reported his findings to us before Honorable Karuhanga blew his whistle in parliament, but he is on record attacking the later for presenting forged documents. Oh, I almost forgot that Mwenda did not want us to know about the ‘forged’ documents.

In this case, the leak has so far caused no harm to the legal or judicial system of Uganda, but imprisonment of any of the three cabinet ministers (Nassasira, Kuteesa, and Mbabazi) could have a chilling effect on journalism’s ability to expose corruption in the country. Honestly, how much information are journalists hiding from us in the name of ‘forgery’ or because they want to protect someone.

The trouble with journalism in Uganda is that it’s too damn polite. It looks like Journalists there fear deadly retributions if they ever dare to report the truth. In all honesty, why would Mwenda sit on such information as a journalist for a long time when he got it, and even dare present it to the head of the ‘executive’ organ of the state that is supposed to be investigated? The whole events symptomise a visualization of the greed and corruption that have taken old of both the executive branch of the government and journalism itself. How we get out of this situation now, i really dont know.

Up to now, we don’t have any journalist in Uganda that has dedicated his life to at least exposing crime and corruption in the country. In Ireland, for instance, they had a lady called Veronica Guerin who was a crime reporter and ended up being murdered by drug lords in 1996. The film ‘Veronica Guerin’ told the story of her brave soul. It broke my heart when I watched it especially in the end when the two bikers working for the ‘mafias’ put 6 bullets in her body when she stopped at a red traffic light. It’s always hurting when you watch a kind and beautiful person die because of what they believe in.

Veronica Guerin, who was shot dead shot dead by the pillion passenger on a motorbike as she stopped at traffic lights in Naas, just outside Dublin, in June 1996 - 

In Mexico, they also had columnist Francisco Arratia Saldierna, a prominent and well-known journalist who wrote a column called Portavoz (or “Spokesman”). The column featured topics such as corruption, organized crime, and drug trafficking. Arratia’s murder was also as brutal as Veronica’s but both murders resulted into change in policy in those areas.

I’m also tempted to mention two lady giants in journalism that were impressive winners of the Courage in Journalism Awards in 2005: there are Shahla Sherkat, who runs a women’s magazine in Iran and Sumi Khan, a Bangladesh journalist who covers crime. When Mwenda started up the ”Independent”, I really thought that his magazine was going to be like Shahla’s. She has been fined for articles she has published, and has been threatened with imprisonment in Iran’s harsh jails, but she never runs to state to investigate itself before she publishes anything as Mwenda has admittedly done.

Sumi is another crime and corruption reporter based in Bangladesh (Chittagong city). In 2004, she was attacked by three men — beaten and stabbed. It was three months before she returned to work, but she never gave in to the system.

To be fair, Mwenda went into that kind of episode initially and he became a hero to many Ugandans, but it now looks like he gave up on people long time ago and decided to do his own ‘’refined’’ investigative form of journalism. He was among the guys that inspired me to start blogging because of the way he analyzed issues yet I don’t have any qualification in journalism. Up to now, i don’t miss any of his radio talk-shows but he has really disappointed me on this one.

Mwenda should never have defended the ministers publicly whatever reservations he had with the documents because the way Ugandans feel about corruption in Museveni’s government is like in the same way Americans felt during Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. After Vietnam and Watergate, almost every student in USA went to Journalism School convinced that the U.S. Government was corrupt and that s/he would earn a Pulitzer Prize by exposing it. That cynicism about America has never really ended.

Yes, Mwenda is partly right that eagerly publishing forged documents is not “investigative journalism” if the memos content is not verified by second and third sources. But I also believe that verification of the documents becomes difficult if you allow the people being investigated to investigate themselves. Mwenda’s methods are like that of Stalin and Mao who believed that “CRIMES MUST BE HIDDEN,” or else labeled as “heroic deeds.”

Let’s also not forget that “journalism’’ itself is opinion. Most of what Mwenda says or writes in his column is mere speculation clothed in the majesty of journalism, but rife with his personal opinions. Yes, Mbabazi and Kutesa may be innocent but how do we explain the fact that nearly every time a case comes to light involving large-scale fraud or vice or corruption, the duo are playing the lead roles. They seem to be attracted irresistibly to our vices so that they can exploit them and at the same time exacerbate them. They are not worth defending publicly by anybody worth his name.

Because mwenda came out to say that he was the first to land on these documents, some people are unfairly dragging Paul Kagame into this. In any case, Mwenda only revealed the location where he got the documents but he never revealed his source. The location was Nairobi not Kigali. The Oil corruption scandal has put the Museveni government in the spot light. Oil companies are capable of bringing down any government in Africa. Therefore, the government should handle this issue very carefully. It looks like both the cabinet ministers and the oil companies are now blackmailing each other with endless revealations, but oil companies will always be the winners in the end if this situation continues.

Byebyo ebyange banange
–
Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba

Statistics on International Development 2011

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In 2010/11 £4,254m (55%) of the DFID programme was bilateral assistance and £3,222m (42%) was multilateral assistance. The remaining £214m (3%) was spent on administration costs. Of the £4,254m bilateral assistance delivered in 2010/11, 67 per cent (or £2,845m) was spent through DFID’s country programme. DFID’s bilateral expenditure rose to £4,254m in 2010/11 from £3,958m in 2009/10 (a 7% increase).India (£279m), Ethiopia (£251m) and Pakistan (£203m) received the largest amounts of DFID bilateral aid. In 2010/11, DFID provided bilateral assistance to 78 countries, of which 37 countries received direct financial aid. The total DFID bilateral assistance to these 37 countries was £2,271m. When humanitarian assistance is excluded, DFID bilateral assistance to these 37 countries represented 85 per cent of DFID country specific bilateral aid.
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/sid2011/SID-2011.pdf 

The Impact of Climate Change in Africa

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Report of the Global Commodities Forum 2011

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Markets allow for the efficient processes of price discovery and risk mitigation. In the last decade, however, these markets have undergone a sea change. Massive inflows of capital have led to a process of financialization whereby the operations of actual physical traders have become dwarfed by those of financial traders. Coinciding with a time of high instability in commodity prices, this process has generated a lively debate on the extent to which commodity price movements are directed by financial speculation rather than supply and demand fundamentals. The food price crises of 2008 and 2010 - 11, in particular, have drawn the world’s attention to this issue.
http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/suc2011d5_en.pdf 

World Investment Report 2011

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In 2010 – for the first time – developing economies absorbed close to half of global FDI inflows. They also generated record levels of FDI outflows, much of it directed to other countries in the South. This further demonstrates the growing importance of developing economies to the world economy, and of South-South cooperation and investment for sustainable development.

Increasingly, transnational corporations are engaging with developing and transition economies through a broadening array of production and investment models, such as contract manufacturing and farming, service outsourcing, franchising and licensing. These relatively new phenomena present opportunities for developing and transition economies to deepen their integration into the rapidly evolving global economy, to strengthen the potential of their home-grown productive capacity, and to improve their international competitiveness.
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Saving lives, preventing suffering and building resilience

This document is the British Government’s new humanitarian policy. It sets out how the UK will help build resilience to future disasters and respond to humanitarian need created by conflict and natural disasters. 

The policy commits the British Government to build resilience in all countries where it works and recognises the importance of anticipation, humanitarian leadership and innovation. It also outlines the UK’s ambition to work with others to find new ways of acting quickly in "slow onset" disasters to stop them becoming major emergencies. It highlights the UK’s commitment to the principle of delivering aid according to need and need alone.

http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/1/The%20UK%20Government%27s%20Humanitarian%20Policy%20-%20September%202011%20-%20Final.pdf  

Climate change radio advocacy, rethinking our future: project completion report

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Within a period of 12 months, the project was able to carry out 22 panel discussions involving stakeholders from policy level, NGOs to local communities. Interviews with 200 people including local farmers, fishermen, taxi drivers, university students and lecturers were also carried out, enabling them to share their knowledge, understanding or in some cases their coping mechanism of the effect of climate change. The project paid a particular emphasis on local communities' adaptation efforts and knowledge on climate change adaptation, which for far too long was under-utilised or not considered in climate change policy formulation at the national level

http://www.preventionweb.net/files/22732_22732projectcompletionreport231.pdf  

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Emerging practices in participatory poverty reduction in China

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http://pubs.iied.org/pdfs/14605IIED.pdf 

Building Security: A Contribution to the Debate on Security Policy

Building Security describes that today’s security policy priorities in actual fact may be undermining opportunities for achieving a sustainable peace and security for all. This is particularly clear in the wake of the events of 9/11 and the so-called ‘war on terror’. Military actions are often prioritized the female part of the population are put further down the security policy agenda. http://www.kvinnatillkvinna.se/sites/default/files/Building_Security_webb.pdf 

World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development

The lives of girls and women have changed dramatically over the past quarter century. The pace of change has been astonishing in some areas, but in others, progress toward gender equality has been limited - even in developed countries.

This year's World Development Report: Gender Equality and Development argues that gender equality is a core development objective in its own right. It is also smart economics. Greater gender equality can enhance productivity, improve development outcomes for the next generation, and make institutions more representative.

The Report also focuses on four priority areas for policy going forward: (i) reducing excess female mortality and closing education gaps where they remain, (ii) improving access to economic opportunities for women (iii) increasing women's voice and agency in the household and in society and (iv) limiting the reproduction of gender inequality across generations.
http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXTWDR2012/0,,contentMDK:23004468~pagePK:64167689~piPK:64167673~theSitePK:7778063,00.html 

Somalia: Aid agencies have scaled up efforts since the end of August

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http://www.unocha.org/top-stories/all-stories/somalia-aid-agencies-have-scaled-efforts-end-august  

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http://www.bshf.org/published-information/publication.cfm?lang=00&thePubID=C6B1F4B3-15C5-F4C0-99996313CF5D627D