The Cuban example
Last Tuesdayâs Monitor invigorated me. Jinja Mayor insinuated that Pafo wanted âto bring confusion and chaos, âfor their own benefitâ (my emphasis); impliedly whitewashing the rowdy, systemized mob: authors of the chaos, for the benefit of their patrons.Compare Monitorâs radiant editorial âCuba makes for a bad example,â with usually bright Mayomboâs acclaim of Castroâs Cuba as paradigm.
Yes, of people more equal than others; of citizens perpetually skulking into exile. Where one person rules for four and a half decades: a lesson we have avidly imbibed, and are essaying to emulate by any means: including illegitimately contorting the Constitution.Uncharacteristic: because I considered the likes of Mayombo, Shaban Bantariza, Hope Kivengere and Mary Karooro (now MP), classic civil servants, obliged to whittle or adjust the truth to the taste of their employers; not to initiate political falsehoods.Paradoxically, the President labels his opponents âempty tins:â implying that the likes of Ruzindana are loquacious (talkative).
Really? Boorish language notwithstanding: surely the likes of Ruzindanas, Kategayas, Mugisha Muntus; or indeed Gerald Sendaula, Edward Rugumayo, John Nasasira and Khidu Makubuya, are relatively reticent persons. I wonder who qualifies to designate whom âtalkative!âI have persistently maintained that the âMovementâ was a phantom benefiting its Ayatollah. God, and how long it has taken the Kategayas to wake up to it!!
F.D.R. Gureme
Kampala
"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the state."
- Dr. Joseph M. Goebbels - Hitler's propaganda minister
