The Uganda communication Commission (UCC)’s Obed Katureebe fancies being and sounding like an intellectual. However, sycophancy that feeds into his minute brain have been, and will always be the main impediment to him ever achieving this or any other thing in life.
Despite knowing that his efforts are futile, the Uganda state house and CMI propagandist never gives up. He has turned Rwanda into his preferred guinea pig, onto which he test-drives his futile intellectual trials.
As Obed tries dwells on Rwanda’s leadership and governance style and trying desperately to find fault where there is none, he deliberately ignores the ills of governance committed by his paymaster Museveni, who has ruled Uganda for 35 years, having been helped by Rwandan refugees to grab power.
Commentators on African governance have always joked that Museveni’s rule in Uganda is like driving a car in ‘free gear’ (manual transmission), or ‘neutral’ (for automatic transmission), where Ugandans are made to push the car throughout the 35 years of him being in the driver’s seat.
As Obed wonders why the Rwandan President is not going on live TV like his old paymaster to give addresses and updates on Coronavirus in Rwanda, the world has been wondering why Museveni is embarrassing himself by doing so. In Rwanda, things follow logic and method. Rwanda has a well-oiled system where things follow a logical path, not volongoto way of doing things in Uganda.
The dim-witted Uganda statehouse apologist is castigating the Rwandan President for letting institutions and relevant leaders do their job without interruption. He believes everyone should commit leadership blunders like his master. Unlike Uganda, Rwanda has been able to effectively follow WHO’s guidelines and recommendations of Isolate, test, treat and trace. The result has been a systematic isolation of suspected cases for testing and management. The well managed lockdown and well communicated directives issued to the population are expected to yield impressive results.
In contrast, while Museveni has been busy convening Coronavirus taskforce teams at state house and teaching Ugandans primary school biology on television, senior government and state house officials, senior army and police officers were smuggling relatives and family members arriving at Entebbe airport from high risk countries like the US, Italy, China and Dubai.
While being entertained by Museveni at state house, the Coronavirus taskforce’s valuable time is wasted, as the smuggled relatives of the untouchable families infiltrate their suburbs and villages to mingle and infect ordinary Ugandans who were hitherto not at any risk.
By the time they leave state house late in the evening, the taskforce led by the minister of health is too tired and confused to know where to start and where to end. It is not surprising therefore, that in spite of the so many suspected cases from high risk countries; Uganda has continued to under declare confirmed Coronavirus cases.
Ugandans and the taskforce know thoroughly well that Uganda is a Coronavirus ticking bomb, but they have nothing much to do about it since their hands are tied, by a ruler who would rather sell himself to the world on television than let institutions and the ministry of health do their work at a time when the country needs leadership most.
In Obed’s pseudo-intellectual logic, effective leadership is manifested by how many times a President appears on TV, and it doesn’t matter whether what he is saying has no circumstantial substance.
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