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The Long View
By Mary K. Okurut |
Criticise, but don’t insult the president
June 7, 2003
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Obviously I do not agree with Mzee FDR Gureme as far as the leadership of this country is concerned. I do not have to expound on this theme; whoever reads the papers knows the old man has never exactly toasted to the good health of the Movement. However, I would like to commend him for his apology to the president. In a letter to The Monitor, 5 June, he said he was apologising “to His Excellency the President, his family and those who will have been upset by my “_expression_, which admittedly was in rather bad taste”. This is the first time I am seeing this kind of thing since President Museveni came to power and it is coming from the most unlikely quarters. After such a thing, you get the feeling that perhaps giraffes can breed monkeys, after all. Mzee Gureme’s apology came after I met him outside All Saints Cathedral after the 11 O’clock service last Sunday. He had penned something in Sunday Monitor that day, sections of which did read like insults to the person of the President. After the service, I found Mzee Gureme and after the usual niceties of how are you and how is the weather, I got straight to the point. I told him: “Mzee, I am not the one who ought to be telling you what to write and what not to – after all, who am I? But why don’t you put your points, even if you are criticising the President, without necessarily insulting him?” Another highly placed gentleman (gentleman in the real sense of the word, especially in these times when that word belongs to the era of fiction) echoed my sentiments: your analysis was not bad, but why should you insult the President? You may criticise the President, but surely, you should not insult him. Mzee Gureme said he was not aware he had insulted the President. But he would read the article again and if he found an insult, he would apologise. Obviously he did find the insult somewhere because he took time off to pen an apology. I suggest that this is a good starting point for Ugandans to rediscover our lost manners. The Internal Security Organisation where Mr Rwomushana was working promptly sacked him. A large section of our community said yeah, this was the perfect way forward; you do not abuse your elders and your betters and get away with it. We are beginning to rediscover ourselves as good mannered people who lost it somewhere along the way. Other people had given up. Parents had given up about their children and would be content to sigh, “ah, children of these days,” as though “these days” are the parents of these errant children! Most of this is nothing but insults. Nobody is against criticism; but you find for instance a Member of Parliament addressing people at some fundraising function and most of his tirade is nothing but insults against the president. Then you wonder what kind of upbringing this kind of fellow actually had. In our culture, you can disagree with a leader but you do not call him names. I will venture the opinion that in most cases these tirades against the president are usually not a manifestation of incompetence on his part; but rather on the part of these speakers who use the insults to cover up their inadequacies in public speaking. And sometimes, their lack of writing skills. They simply look for something that will work their audience or readership into frenzy, seeking to play on their emotions, while abandoning the more difficult path of appealing to reason. The latter way becomes terribly difficult when you have nothing to say or you do not know just how to say it. So it becomes much easier to throw mud at whomever you want and be sure to get the equivalent of a standing ovation for your labour of hate. Lastly, some people seem to have found the perfect excuse in this so-called anti-third term thing to hurl insults at the president. Even if you do not like the third term thing, you can amply state your case without poking your finger in the president’s eye. The author can be contacted on e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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