A tale of an envoy and army choppers
By Karoli Ssemogerere
Dec 21, 2003
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The Department of State is eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new Ugandan ambassador to the United States, after hosting Elizabeth Bafakuleka Ssempala for over a decade as ambassador. Routinely, ambassadors complete their tours of duty in three years but Ms Ssempala, a Russian trained general engineer who served one tour in Copenhagen defied diplomatic wisdom and stayed in Washington over at least one direct transfer.
Her replacement according to very reliable sources is a new foreign service officer, who has risen rapidly through the ranks, former journalist, 37-year-old Adonia Ayebare, currently ambassador to Rwanda and Burundi. Mr Ayebare, a former bureau chief for The East African, began his media career with the Uganda Confidential and Marketplace newspapers. Ssempala of Gayaza fame is slated to return to Moscow. An analytical reading of the posting to a long ignored and a diplomatic backwater, are her professional skills and possible interaction with the fledgling oil industry in Russia which is the unexplained issue behind the institutional momentum towards lifting the two term limit on the president's tenure under the 1995 Constitution. **** Justice Julie Semambo Sebutinde and her colleagues at the Courts of Judicature are stretching the meaning of Article 128(7) of the Constitution that limits the variation of emoluments to a judge's disadvantage while in office. The Article's express intent according to the framers of the Constitution was to protect them from reduction in their pay and benefits to punish them for ruling independently of the wishes of the government of the day. The monthly salary for a judge of the High Court is at least Shs 2.5 million which comes to more than Shs 5.3 million in gross allowances per month. Judges and cabinet ministers earn a gross annual pay of Shs 60 million a year, not a fortune but very agreeable with Uganda's cost of living and size of the economy. Judges like other citizens, while enjoying the privileges of citizenship, must pay their fair share of what it takes to support the huge unwieldy structure of the state. Infact, according to this very selfish interpretation of the law, new judges are paying taxes while their senior colleagues who amass increased entitlements from more years in service do not. *** And back to the logic of the Sebutinde Report which failed to find political responsibility for persons who authorised bribe taking or acquisition procedures that fell outside the Military Tender Board procedures. It smacks of selective justice. We are still waiting for the DPP, Richard Buteera to act. Mr Buteera was a midnight appointment prior to the coming into force of the 1995 Constitution. He replaced Mr Alfred Nasaba, an Obote II holdover, as DPP. So far in matters concerning the president's family, his record is 3-0. The fraudulent Westmont UCB purchase, the fraudulent Uganda-Grain Millers purchase and the Helicopter Scandal have all kept the members of the president's family adversely mentioned in court and criminal investigations safe from prosecution. Maj. Shaban Bantariza, the army spokesman gave us a peek of the distribution of resources in the Ministry of Defence. The army is labouring under the weight of payroll, over Shs 100 billion in salaries for junior soldiers and officers. Has the UPDF been quietly recruiting? The answer is yes, why? Further into this honest attempt to explain UPDF's financial squeeze was an outrage: the armored helicopters providing cover to troops in the north fly out of Entebbe, burning 1,250 liters of fuel each way without counting combat hours. Net fuel importers like Uganda would never waste resources like that. Entebbe is not under any threat of an imminent aerial attack. It explains the slow reaction times for UDPF detachments in the field waiting for the pilots who should be training with the forces they support. This fly to the venue approach cannot work. Secondly, the wisdom of mass troop recruitment to fight a diminishing band of thugs removes resources from what should be the army's biggest task, civil affairs and rebuilding. President Yoweri Museveni often brags about Gulu as Uganda's tinsel-town that has partly flourished from the defense expenditure associated with the war. Gulu's expansion masks the fact that Acholi's diminishing population is holed up in camps. After 15 years of development, the image of tall elephant grass and mud and wattle structures convey a failure of strategy. Part of Kony's mystery lies behind this deliberate under-development and the answer may lie in Ms Ssempala's posting to Moscow. |
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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