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Is the BBI a Trojan Horse Disguised as a Guardian Angel?
10 min read.The Building Bridges Initiative fails to inspire because it offers simplistic solutions to problems that have more to do with poor leadership than with Kenyans’ inability to be responsible citizens.
I have resisted commenting on the recently launched Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report, mainly because in Kenya today if you oppose the BBI, you are labelled as being in Deputy President William Ruto’s camp, and if you support it, you are seen as being on the side of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his new ally, former opposition leader, Raila Odinga. And since I do not belong to either of these groups, I was afraid that by commenting on the report, I might inadvertently be labelled pro-Uhuru or pro-Ruto.
Critics of the BBI have mainly focused on whether amending the constitution through the BBI process is, in fact, unconstitutional as it would bypass many of the requirements for amending the 2010 constitution, which are onerous and virtually impossible to fulfill without a national consensus. Some critics, like the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, say that by giving the president power to appoint a prime minister and two deputy prime ministers, the BBI is calling for a return to an imperial presidency.
On the other hand, supporters of the BBI – particularly the “handshake” stakeholders and many commentators in the mainstream media – have lauded the BBI for being the magic pill that will unite the country and spur social and economic development.
Intellectual surrender
Having now read the abridged version of the BBI report, I can conclusively say that it has failed to address the biggest crisis facing this country – that of poor leadership. The most offensive and egregious section of the report is undoubtedly the opening Validation Statement, which places the responsibility for all that is wrong with this country squarely on the shoulders of Kenyans – not on our leaders, who got us into the mess we are in in the first place.
The report states: “Kenyans decried the fact that Kenya lacked a sense of national ethos and is increasingly a nation of distinct individuals instead of an individually distinct nation. And we have placed too much emphasis on what the nation can do for each of us – our rights – and given almost no attention to what we each must do for our nation: our responsibilities.”
As Wandia Njoya pointed out in a recent article, what the BBI has effectively done is told Kenyans that they are to blame if their rights are violated. And if moral and ethical standards have dropped across the country, it’s not because the country’s politicians have lowered moral and ethical standards and have set a bad precedent, but because Kenyans just don’t know how to behave properly. It’s called blaming the victim.
It suggests that Kenyans are somehow wired to be evil or corrupt, that decades of state-inflicted brutality against citizens – an offshoot of a neocolonial dispensation where citizens are treated as gullible and exploitable subjects – has nothing to do with the culture of impunity we find ourselves in. That the contemptuous way in which we are treated by state institutions – at police stations, in public hospitals, in government offices – is somehow our fault. And that the example of how to behave was not established by the state and its officials that consistently fail to deliver justice to Kenyans and turn a blind eye to violence committed by state and security organs, especially against the poor. Remember, this is a country where a chicken thief can end up spending a year in jail, but a minister who has stolen billions from state coffers can get away scot-free.
Njoya writes:
We are told that discussing history is blaming colonialists and refusing to take responsibility for our own actions. That discussing ethnic privilege and patronage is attacking every single member of that ethnic group. That discussing patriarchy is blaming men. That explaining systemic causes of problems is explaining away or excusing those problems. Every public conversation in Kenya is a war against complex thinking. We have reached the point where Kenyan public conversations are pervaded by this system of intellectual simplification.
Hence the BBI’s proposal to set up a new commission to address “indiscipline in children, breakdown of marriages and general erosion of cultural values in today’s society”. Presumably, this commission will take on the role of parents, school teachers and community leaders “by mainstreaming ethics training and awareness in mentoring and counselling sessions in religious activities and through community outreach programmes”.
What is being implied here is that if only Kenyans were more religious, they might not behave so badly. (I wonder if the drafters of the report know that Kenyans are among the most religious people in the world. Yet we are consistently ranked as among the most corrupt countries on the planet.)
The BBI report recognises that ethnic divisions have polarised the country, but it does not acknowledge that ethnic polarisation is the result of a political leadership that forms opportunistic tribal alliances for its own advantage and is happy to pit one ethnic community against another in order to win elections.
Moreover, its recommendations on how to reduce ethnic animosity appear to be based on the idea that if you force different ethnic communities to live in close proximity to each other, Kenya will miraculously become a society where all ethnic groups live together in peace and harmony.
There is also this misguided belief that if the people in authority are from an ethnic group that is distinct from the ethnic group that these people lord over, there will be more accountability (a model borrowed from the Kenya Police and the colonial and post-colonial district and provincial commissioners’ templates). Hence the Ministry of Education should “adopt policy guidelines that discourage local recruitment and staffing of teachers”.
Many sociologists and behavioural scientists might argue that, in fact, if you want more accountability and cohesion in a community, the leadership should come from that same community. So, for instance, if police officers belong to the same ethnic community that they serve and protect, they are more likely to be more accountable to that community because any signs of misconduct on the part of the officer will be perceived as having a direct bearing on the welfare of that community. A bribe-taking officer is more likely to be reprimanded by his community because it is his community that suffers when he takes a bribe. A Kalenjin police officer posted in Malindi, for instance, will not care what the Giriama community he is extorting bribes from or is brutalising think of him because he is not part of them and is not accountable to them or to their community leaders and elders. This accountability is further diminished by the current practice of police officers regularly being transferred to different localities.
Similarly, in schools, particularly those in remote or marginalised areas, it is important that the teachers be from that community because they also play the role of mentors and role models. We are more likely to follow in the footsteps of someone who looks like us and who has a similar history than someone who doesn’t. Which is why Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has opened the doors to leadership for so many girls and women of colour in the United States.
This is not to say that the BBI report glosses over the problems facing marginalised communities. On the contrary, it makes it a point to highlight that “the marginalised, the under-served and the poor” are suffering and are in urgent need of “an immediate helping hand and employment opportunities to help them survive”. What the report fails to recognise is that the Constitution of Kenya 2010 was designed to ensure that such communities are not condemned to perpetual poverty. Devolution was supposed to sort out issues of marginalisation by ensuring that previously marginalised communities and counties are empowered to improve their own welfare. By making them recipients of hand-outs, the BBI has added insult to their injury.
Thankfully, the report does recommend that previous reports by task forces and land-related commissions, including the Ndung’u Land Commission and the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC), be implemented. My question is: If President Uhuru Kenyatta did not implement the recommendations of the TJRC, which handed its report to him in May 2013 shortly after he assumed the presidency, what guarantees do we have that he and his BBI team will implement the recommendations now? The president has also failed on his promise of a Sh10 billion fund for victims of historical injustices. What has changed? Clearly not the leadership (and here I mean the entire leadership, not just Uhuru’s).
Silences and omissions
Moving on to another marginalisation issue: women’s representation. We all know that Parliament has actively resisted the two-thirds gender rule spelled out in the constitution. So what epiphany has occurred now that suddenly there is an urgent desire to include more women in governance institutions? If Parliament had just obeyed the constitution, there would not be a proposal in the BBI to ensure that no more than two-thirds of members of elective or appointive bodies be of the same gender. It would be a given.
And yet while BBI gives with one hand, it takes with the other. The BBI task force proposes that the position of County Women’s Representative in the National Assembly be scrapped.
What’s worse, the BBI actually appears to welcome the recommendation of “some Kenyans” that Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) commissioners be appointed by political parties. Really? If you think that the 2007, 2013 and 2017 elections were fraudulent and chaotic, then wait for serious fraud and possible violence in an election where the electoral body’s commissioners represent party interests. (If I had my way, I would disband the IEBC altogether and put together a non-partisan body comprising foreign officials to run elections in this country. Maybe then we would have some hope of a free, fair and corruption-free election.)
The BBI is also silent on the role of the IEBC in vetting candidates, and ensuring that they adhere to Chapter Six of the Constitution on leadership and integrity. Let us not forget that many of the candidates in the last two elections had questionable backgrounds, and some were even facing charges in court. Why did the IEBC not ensure that those running for office had clean records?
On the economy, or what it calls “shared prosperity”, the BBI, emphasises the role of industry and manufacturing in the country’s economic development but is silent on agriculture, which currently employs about half of Kenya’s labour force and accounts for nearly 30 per cent of Kenya’s GDP, but which remains one the most neglected and abused sectors in Kenya. It’s a miracle that our hardworking and much neglected farmers are able to feed all of us, given that they receive so little support from the government, which consistently undermines local farmers by importing cheap or substandard food and by providing farmers with few incentives.
Besides, it is highly unlikely that Kenya will become a factory for the region, let alone the world, like China, because it simply does not have the capacity to do so. Why not focus on services, another mainstay of the economy?
The BBI also talks of harnessing regional trade and cooperation and sourcing products locally but, again, we know this is simply lip service. If Uhuru Kenyatta’s government was keen on improving trade within the region, it would not have initiated a bilateral trade agreement with the United States that essentially rubbishes and undermines the country’s previous regional trade agreements with Eastern and Southern African countries and trading blocs.
On the yoke around every Kenyan’s neck – corruption – the BBI’s approach is purely legalistic and administrative. It wants speedy prosecution of cases involving corruption and wastage of public resources and it wants to protect whistleblowers. (Good luck with the latter. In my experience, no whistleblower protection policy has protected whistleblowers, not even in the United Nations.)
BBI also wants to digitise all government services to curb graft. But as the economist David Ndii pointed out at the recent launch of the Africog report, “Highway Robbery: Budgeting for State Capture”, if corruption is built into the very architecture of the Kenyan government, no amount of digitisation will help. Remember how the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) was manipulated to steal millions from the Ministry of Devolution in what is known as the NYS scandal? Computer systems are created and run by people, and these people can become very adept at deleting their digital footprints from these systems. As the former Auditor-General, Edward Ouko, pointed out, when corruption is factored into the budget (i.e. when budgets are prepared with corruption in mind), corruption becomes an essential component of procurement and tendering processes. So let’s think of more creative and innovative ways of handling graft within government.
Which is not to say that the BBI task force has not struggled with this issue. There are various proposals to amend public finance laws to make the government more accountable on how it spends taxpayers’ money. But we know that these laws can be undermined by the very people responsible for implementing them, as the various mega-corruption scandals in various ministries and state institutions have shown.
A Trojan horse?
Many Kenyans suspect that perhaps the real and only reason for the BBI is that it will allow for the creation of new powerful positions – such as that of prime minister to accommodate both Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta – and will set the stage for a return to a parliamentary system of governance instead of the current presidential “winner-takes-all” system. But while the latter might appear to be a worthwhile endeavour, the fact that former opposers of the new constitution and the parliamentary system now appear to be endorsing both suggests that there is something more to this than meets the eye. As Prof. Yash Pal Ghai has repeatedly stated, the constitution endorsed at Bomas was premised on a parliamentary system and was only changed at the last minute to accommodate a presidential system. That is how we ended up where we are now.
It also appears strange that those who benefitted most from the presidential system now want to change the constitution. As Waikwa Wanyoike, put it:
Worse, those hell-bent on immobilising the constitution have done so by conjuring up and feeding a narrative that it is an idealistic and unrealistic charter. Because they wield power, they have used their vantage points to counter most of the salutary aspects of the constitution. Uhuru Kenyatta’s consistent and contemptuous refusal to follow basic requirements of the constitution in executing the duties of his office, including his endless defiance of court orders, stands out as the most apt example here.
Yet all this is calculated to create cynicism among Kenyans about the potency of the constitution. Hoping that the cynicism will erode whatever goodwill Kenyans have towards the constitution, the elites believe that they can fully manipulate or eliminate the constitution entirely and replace it with laws that easily facilitate and legitimise their personal interests, as did Jomo Kenyatta and Moi.
If indeed we want to go back to a parliamentary system through a referendum, then we should hold the referendum when the current crop of politicians (some of whom, including Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, were opposed to the 2010 constitution in the first place) are not in leadership positions because many Kenyans simply don’t trust them to do what is in Kenyans’ best interest. After all, a fox cannot be relied on to guard a chicken coop.
Already the president has urged Parliament to pass laws that conform to the BBI proposals – this even before the proposed referendum that will decide whether the majority of the country’s citizens are for or against the BBI’s raft of recommendations. In other words, the BBI proposals may become laws even before the country decides whether these laws are acceptable and are what the country needs.
Are the goodies proposed in the BBI, such as providing debt relief to jobless graduates and allocating a larger share of national revenue to the counties, just enticements to lure Kenyans onto the BBI bandwagon so as to ensure that the current political establishment consolidates its hold on power? Is the BBI a Trojan horse disguised as a guardian angel? Only time will tell.
One possibility, however, is that a groundswell of public opinion against the BBI might just overturn the whole process.
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The Sea That Eats Our Children
The Mediterranean Sea is only 2,400 miles across, or about half the length of continental Africa, but in the 2010s it earned distinction as the largest mass burial site for Africans in the modern world.
Although crossings between Africa, Asia and Europe are as old as settlement along its shores, in the modern era, restrictions on travel and violent border security have turned the sea into a mass graveyard, where countries would rather return vulnerable people to death or near-certain slavery than allow for a measure of safety. Almost all of Europe is complicit in turning people away at their most vulnerable, including by intimidating boats defying the fortress that Europe built.
The deaths on the Mediterranean Sea have wrongly been framed as an African, a Syrian or even a Libyan crisis; as being about migration. While Europe has been quick to hijack the discussion and declare this a crisis of the European border, in fact it’s a crisis of the European state—one that has everything to do with the history of conflict and division within that continent. So much of how the world’s states function and fear comes from Europe’s bloody and violent history.
There are three main routes that will get you across the Mediterranean from Africa or Asia into Europe. These routes have been used for almost as long as travel across the Mediterranean has been documented. Scattered across the coastline is the detritus of ancient civilisations that fed into the birth of the modern age—Sparta in Greece, Carthage in Tunisia, Alexandria in Egypt, historical Athens and Rome—telling a story of societies that have been in constant if not always friendly contact with each other.
If Western philosophy is a cornerstone of Western politics and society, it’s worth noting that many of the most notable products of Western philosophy are in fact products of the free movement of people and ideas across the water. Augustine of Hippo was an African man whose theology and philosophy are at the heart of modern Christianity and Western political thought. His theory of the just war is still taught in international relations and political science classes all around the world. Historians say that Augustine was Berber—from a pastoralist people—and so migration and mobility were central to his worldview even before he moved to Rome and Milan to continue his work. Movement has always been central to the Mediterranean region’s intellectual fertility, and modern hostility to it is only contributing to its decline.
If Western philosophy is a cornerstone of Western politics and society, it’s worth noting that many of the most notable products of Western philosophy are in fact products of the free movement of people and ideas across the water
It’s not that there has never before been hostility between the communities of the Mediterranean. Remember: Europe has always been a violent place. But as Europe has coalesced into an enormous social and political project, the scope of the damage has become greater. Bertrand Russell once wrote that leaders have always been stupid, but they have never been quite so powerful before; he was writing of the period between the world wars, but the same can be said today. The human capacity to inflict harm is greater than it has ever been, which makes historical tensions and hatreds all the more dangerous. Alarming numbers of people are now dying while using routes that have been in place for hundreds of years.
The 1990 Schengen Convention found a way to keep both the historically open and the historically closed countries happy, despite the new system abolishing internal visa controls and agreeing common visa policies (to reduce bureaucracy at many European countries’ borders). The compromise was an invasive, humiliating and even violent process of scrutiny for people coming from countries considered to be too poor, and thus a risk for immigration.
Humanitarians will tell you that one thing the Schengen system did with alarming efficiency was to close off all humane routes into Europe for citizens of these unwanted countries who could not meet the required thresholds. For a young man or woman from Senegal or Sudan who couldn’t find work in a village ravaged by climate change, or a collapsing economy, the Schengen regime left no legal way to seek low-wage work in Europe. Of course, it was not ideal that people had been boarding flights to Europe and then claiming asylum or overstaying their tourist visas. But at least they’d been arriving alive. What the architects of Schengen seemed to ignore was the sheer number of people who would now be driven towards smugglers and clandestine routes instead. When people see their options as certain death while standing still, versus a minute chance of success if they move, they will move.
It’s not that there has never before been hostility between the communities of the Mediterranean. Remember: Europe has always been a violent place. But as Europe has coalesced into an enormous social and political project, the scope of the damage has become greater.
Whenever I make this argument to Europeans, I always get a version of “So why don’t the people in those countries just take charge of their politics and make their countries better?” Of course, that would be the better and even the ideal option. But go back to Wallerstein and the use of borders to export instability out of the West. Look at the twentieth century in Africa alone. First the violence of colonisation and invasion. Then the wide-spread, targeted assassination, with the collaboration of Western governments, of visionary leaders like Thomas Sankara and Patrice Lumumba. Then decades of active economic interference and sabotage, culminating in the Structural Adjustment Programs of the late 1980s: loans from the IMF and World Bank to economies in crisis, on condition of structural reforms. Now, we have digital colonialism and Western governments providing cover for private Western corporations to interfere in the politics of developing countries. Do you still think it’s fair to place responsibility on civilians for choices made by states? Why don’t the countries manufacturing and selling weapons to poorer governments just stop doing it? Why don’t governments just stop supporting dictators? Emigration doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
The number of people taking to the seas to get to Europe hasn’t just been increasing because there are simply more people. It’s because legal and safe passage to Europe has disappeared, for all but a small sliver of the world’s population.
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This article was first published by Progressive InternationalProg
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Our Man in Kampala: Museveni and the Americans
America must make the choice to side with the majority of Ugandans who would like to see democracy take root in Uganda.
Since taking power in 1986, President Yoweri Museveni has enjoyed total bipartisan support from six American administrations. Along with America’s help, Museveni’s domestic repression has grown steadily, stymying Uganda’s fledgling democracy. Uganda’s next general election will take place on 14 January 2021, a week before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The Biden administration must not give Museveni carte blanche but should instead make America’s continued support contingent on good governance and accountability.
When he first became president five years after launching a rebellion against President Milton Obote over the disputed December 1980 election, Museveni portrayed himself and his movement, the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) as the antithesis of all previous groups. After 33 years at the helm, Museveni and the National Resistance Movement are indistinguishable from the people he launched a rebellion to dislodge from power.
The speech and the memo
A speech given and a memo written 13 years apart, laid out the vision and the contradictions within the NRM, and more broadly within Uganda, and cast the authors as protagonists in the struggle for democracy in Uganda. The speech was given by Yoweri Museveni in 1986, shortly after he seized power. Kizza Besigye issued the memo on 7 November 1999.
The speech, often referred to as the “fundamental change” speech, laid out the future of Uganda under the NRM, while the memo, “An insider’s view on how NRM lost the broad base”, was the most realistic appraisal of the NRA/M 13 years after it took power.
When he delivered his speech on 29 January 1986, Museveni said, “No one should think that what is happening today is a mere change of guard: it is a fundamental change in the politics of our country.” Museveni added,
“The people of Africa—the people of Uganda—are entitled to democratic government. It is not a favour from any government: it is the right of the people of Africa to have a democratic government. The sovereign power in the land must the population, not the government. The government should not be the master, but the servant of the people.”
Regarding democracy, Museveni said, “It is a birthright to which all the people of Uganda are entitled.”
In November 1999, while still a serving army officer, Col. Kizza Besigye offered an opposing view of the NRA/M when he said, “All in all, when I reflect on the Movement philosophy and governance, I can conclude that the Movement has been manipulated by those seeking to gain or retain political power in the same way that political parties in Uganda were manipulated.” Besigye went further to say that, “[W]hether it’s political parties or Movement, the real problem is dishonest, opportunistic and undemocratic leadership operating in a weak institutional framework and a weak civil society which cannot control them.”
Museveni’s vision of “fundamental change” has produced “no change” and the servant leadership and democracy espoused in his speech are illusory. Besigye’s assessment of the selfish, opportunistic and undemocratic leadership within the NRA/M and in Uganda is all too familiar and the competing realities embodied by Museveni and Besigye have dominated Ugandan politics for over a decade.
A central plank of the NRM was the establishment of a broad-based government and the elimination of all forms of sectarianism. To make good on its promise, the NRM introduced an anti-sectarian law in 1988. The NRM also instituted a no-party system where elections were contested on personal merit rather than party affiliation. For Museveni and the NRM, political parties were the root cause of Uganda’s crises since independence—as they inherently promote “sectarianism”, unlike the Movement, which “fosters consensus”.
Three elements have sustained Museveni’s vice-like grip on power in Uganda: the use of the security apparatus to suppress the opposition, the passing and selective application of laws—even when the courts strike them down—and America’s generosity despite Uganda’s dubious human rights and governance record.
Electoral violence
Three years after publishing the memo, Besigye ran against Museveni in the 2001 general election. The electoral commission declared Museveni the winner. The run-up to the election saw the arrest and assault of Besigye’s supporters. A Select Parliamentary Committee established to examine electoral violence stated that, “violence experienced in elections includes physical assault and shooting, intimidation, abduction and detention of voters”. In all, according to the commission, 17 people were killed and 408 arrests were made.
A few months after the election, Besigye was detained and questioned by the Criminal Investigations Division (CID), allegedly in connection with the offence of treason. Besigye left the country In September 2001, citing persecution by the state. He returned on 26 October 2005.
Unlike in the 2001 elections, in 2006 the state was keen to derail Besigye’s candidacy through legal manoeuvres from the outset to prevent his name from appearing on the ballot. The police filed a case in court accusing him of rape and treason, and arrested him on 12 November, barely a fortnight after he returned to Uganda from exile, and a few months before the election scheduled for March.
When the military realised that the civilian court would grant bail to Besigye and his co-accused, the military prosecutor brought terrorism and weapons offences charges. The court eventually acquitted him of the rape charge. In dismissing the case, high court Judge John Bosco Katutsi said, “The evidence is inadequate, impotent, scandalous, monstrous against a man who brought himself up to compete for the highest position in this country.”
Despite already competing in an election with the odds stacked against him, Besigye lost six weeks to legal fights in the courts where he spent as many days as he did on the campaign trail.
The defiance campaign
After losing two elections, Besigye realised it was almost impossible to beat Museveni at polls which were neither free, nor fair, nor peaceful, or by having the courts overturn the election results and sought to employ other means.
In 2011, Besigye joined other activists in a Walk to Work campaign, a simple yet profound form of protest that highlighted the stark economic realities in Uganda. Even as many Ugandans were struggling to meet their daily needs, the country bought at least eight fighter jets and other military hardware worth US$744 million. Museveni’s inauguration ceremony cost US$1.3 million. That the protest came a few weeks after the electoral commission declared Museveni the winner of the election with over 60 per cent of the vote illustrated the hollowness of Museveni’s victory.
The election took place against the background of the Arab Spring and its potential for contagion, with Museveni viewing the remarkably benign act of people walking to work instead of driving an existential threat. Museveni and the security agencies could not countenance the Walk to Work or other similar activities turning into a popular movement. The 2013 Public Order Management Act and its convenient interpretation came in handy.
Museveni fell back on the template set during the 2001 election. Security agencies visited unspeakable violence on Besigye and his supporters during the election campaign and Museveni was declared the winner by the electoral commission. Besigye contested the validity of the election in court but, while it recognised that there were irregularities, the court ruled that they were not sufficient to modify the outcome of the election.
Enter Bobi Wine
State violence against Besigye and his supporters has been a constant in the Besigye-Museveni contest but for the first time, Museveni‘s opponent is not Besigye. He will be competing against the Kyaddondo East Member of Parliament, Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known by his stage name Bobi Wine. Kyagulanyi was four years old when the NRM came to power in 1986.
And just like with Besigye, Bobi Wine has been at the receiving end of the violence of the state agencies ahead of 2021 election. The police have disrupted his campaign and detained him several times and he has on occasion suspended his campaign in protest at the violence meted out against him and his supporters. He was recently arrested for defying the COVID protocol while campaigning. Predictably, the protocol does not seem to apply to President Museveni, who has been campaigning unimpeded.
America’s support
Museveni’s ascension to power also coincided with the deterioration of the security situation in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and with Muammar Gaddafi’s actions to prop up various African regimes. An astute political entrepreneur, Museveni put Uganda at the service of America and in return, successive American administration gave him political support and financial backing.
When President Ronald Reagan warned him to be wary of Gaddafi’s activities during their first ever meeting, Museveni told Reagan that he had fought Gaddafi before the Americans started fighting him, to which Reagan replied, “I am preaching to a choir.”
Since then, Museveni has made himself indispensable to America’s security calculus in the region. During her visit to Kampala in 1998, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright called Uganda a “beacon in the central African region.”
Uganda is among the largest beneficiaries of the Department of Defense “Train and Equip” programme. The Department of Defense has notified Congress of over US$280 million in equipment and training for Uganda since the 2011 financial year, over US$60 million in joint support to Uganda and Burundi for AMISOM and significant funding for the 2011-2017 counter-LRA effort (Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency). Additionally, Uganda also receives counterterrorism aid through State Department funds. It received over US$30 million in support via the African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership (APRRP).
The state is coming down hard on Bobi Wine because he is tapping into and articulating the latent discontent among the vast majority of Ugandans, those under under 30 who make up over 70 per cent of the country’s population and who cannot relate to Museveni’s self-aggrandising rendering of the Bush Wars or the Idi Amin scarecrow. America has a choice: to side with most Ugandans who would like to see democracy take root in Uganda or with Museveni under the pretext of maintaining stability.
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The IMF’s Austerity Is Strangling Ecuador – Again
Only with careful concerns for the human cost of Ecuador’s capital outflows, fiscal consolidation, and wage ‘rationalization’ can the IMF make good on the bloody legacy of its program in Ecuador, and ensure that its call for consultation is not simply a dialogue of the deaf. By Progressive international
In October 2019, the people of Ecuador rose up against the International Monetary Fund and the austerity demands attached to a $4.2 billion loan to the government of Lenín Moreno. Marching through the streets of Quito, demonstrators called to end the brutal cuts imposed as conditions of IMF support. “What the government has done is reward the big banks, the capitalists, and punish poor Ecuadorians,” a trade unionist told Al Jazeera. “Out with the IMF!” said another.
The IMF, however, has stayed. Following a year of deadly unrest, the IMF and the Ecuadorian authorities continue to advance budget cuts, salary reductions, and sell-offs in exchange for bail-out funds to the government. On 15 December, the newest Ecuador program — a $6.2 billion Extended Fund Facility — will undergo a revision ahead of a fresh disbursement of $2 billion. The revision offers a critical opportunity for the IMF to reflect on the failures of its austerity agenda, and to respond to rising discontent across the country. We worry, however, that this will be yet another opportunity missed — for which the people of Ecuador will suffer the most.
As the early epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic in Latin America, Ecuador has already suffered an historic year of poverty, unemployment, and disease. Thousands of lives and millions of livelihoods were lost as Covid-19 spread through the country. The city of Guayaquil became a global symbol of the human costs of the coronavirus, with stories of overwhelmed hospitals and street-side corpses reported widely.
But the tragic outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic were not incidental. On the contrary, they follow directly from the austerity reforms attached to IMF money. To take one striking example, the IMF bailout resulted in the dismissal of 3,680 public health workers. The impact of these cuts on pandemic preparedness were all too predictable.
The IMF has promised to break with the dogma of austerity in response to these unprecedented conditions. “Spend what you can but keep the receipts,” President Kristalina Georgieva has instructed IMF member-states, giving the green light for major spending increases. “Exceptional times call for exceptional measures.”
In Ecuador, however, there is little evidence of this change of heart. The general objectives of the new Extended Facility, currently under review ahead of the 15 December deadline, appear to incorporate the concerns of Ecuador’s aching communities, calling for greater protection of life and livelihoods during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
But the IMF’s apparent sensitivity to these struggles is immediately undermined by the agreement’s call for a drastic fiscal adjustment of 5.5% of Ecuador’s GDP until 2025. Our research on the new agreement suggests instead that the IMF remains committed to the very same austerian principles that rocked the country one year ago.
Consider its provisions for Ecuadorian workers. The new agreement calls for the “rationalization” of wages, adjusting the basic salary to more “competitive” levels. But the call to “rationalize” workers’ wages violates Ecuador’s own Constitutional Article 328, which establishes the obligation that “remuneration will be fair, with a living wage that meets the basic needs of the working person as well as that of his family.” The IMF — and the government of Lenín Moreno — has a legal obligation to respect these articles and ensure that the people of Ecuador can access their constitutional rights to a fair wage.
Consider also the agreement’s changes to Ecuador’s central banking. The IMF is calling for a reform of the Monetary and Financial Code to establish greater “autonomy” for Ecuador’s Central Bank — in short, to disassociate it from the executive branch and pass it into the hands of a Board with the participation of private actors. But this “autonomy” would take away the tools of liquidity management that allow governments to protect the lives and livelihoods of the population. Here again, the ‘good governance’ agenda advanced by the IMF threatens to undermine the democratic accountability — and capacity — of the government on the other end.
Finally, the IMF is obliged by its Articles of Agreement to ensure that there are no significant outflows of capital in the countries that are undergoing its programs. The IMF understands well this is a particular problem for Ecuador, given its dollarized economy. But the IMF program in Ecuador excludes this. Paradoxically, the same day the agreement was approved, the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office released their capital flows report suggesting that controls should be strengthened to address the problem of dangerous outflows. Will the IMF listen and learn, or look aside once more?
15 December should mark a critical juncture in the IMF’s relationship to the people of Ecuador: a chance for reflection, a fresh start in a new year, an opportunity to deliver on President Georgieva’s new promises of social protection.
But the IMF can only realize this opportunity with a clear and honest review of the impacts of its austerity measures, and a fundamental realignment of its policy agenda to respect the constitutional rights of the Ecuadorian people. Only with careful concerns for the human cost of Ecuador’s capital outflows, fiscal consolidation, and wage ‘rationalization’ can the IMF make good on the bloody legacy of its program in Ecuador, and ensure that its call for consultation is not simply a dialogue of the deaf.
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