Will Museveni Cabinet of fishermen deliver?
By Timothy Kalyegira More by this Author  President Museveni this week announced his first post-election Cabinet. Judging by the reaction of the general public, the Opposition, the media and even a large cross-section of the ruling NRM party membership, this could prove to be the most belittled of any since 1986. The general view is that this is a Cabinet that favours loyalty over competence and intellectualism, a view the President indirectly acknowledged in his response in which he borrowed a biblical metaphor of fishermen. It had to do with humble but loyal folk selected by Jesus Christ as disciples versus the learned class of the New Testament Pharisees, scribes and teachers of the law. The 2020-2021 Museveni election campaign message suggested a forward-looking, modernising drive. Social media posts from the Museveni task force highlighted the new four-lane highways, hydro-power dams, a revived Uganda Airlines and so forth. Securing your future and steady progress were the catchphrases. The NRM presented itself as a grouping of educated, experienced and more technically competent people than their main rivals in 2021, the National Unity Platform (NUP). NRM supporters sought to contrast candidate Museveni, with his grasp of East African history, economic policy and security strategy with the inexperienced NUP candidate Robert Kyagulanyi who in some interviews showed a shaky knowledge of economic policy. In his recent State-of-the-Nation address, President Museveni suggested the idea of power being handed to the Descendants of Resistance Army or children of NRA veterans. Many thought this was a signal that a new generation of digitally savvy, globally-minded NRM loyalist technocrats in their 20s to 40s were next in line. Advertisement  Thats why the new Cabinet came as a surprise. The new Cabinet is a complete departure from the image projected by the NRM/Museveni campaign task force. The general view by the public is that this is a Cabinet recycling some old NRM figures. The younger members of the new Cabinet are perceived by the public as more sycophant than technocrat. Even NRM loyalists must be puzzled by Musevenis new line-up: Out with intellectuals, in with the low-brow. The first hint of this was the joint TV appearance last Sunday by Museveni and a one Resty Nakyambadde. Well-educated NRM supporters and officials who during the election campaign often mocked NUP over some of its incoherent, school dropout parliamentary candidates have had the joke turned on them by Museveni. The answer is no, the new Cabinet will not deliver. This article will explain why. First, the size of the Cabinet alone suggests that it will be difficult to achieve the governments strategic goals. It was just a few weeks ago that the Uganda government entered into talks with the Chinese government and Western financial institutions to reschedule Ugandas external debt that was approaching a crisis level. Given this, appointing an 80-member Cabinet on the back of the already more than 100 districts and the huge Parliament is no way to achieve fiscal discipline. Not only does a large Cabinet bring with it large public expenses, but it also comes with the complication in arriving at agreement or consensus on policy matters. As we saw with the 2020 campaign, the NRM party has a lot of internal friction and bitter personal feuding. The only common uniting force in the NRM is the person of Museveni. The larger the Cabinet, the higher the chances of infighting and it wont be long before we start to hear or read about reports of one or the other Cabinet minister claiming that the mafia are trying to sabotage or even kill him or her. Secondly, the challenges facing Uganda over the next five years increasingly require technical and technocratic knowledge. More and more, our lives, businesses and public utilities are being built around electronic communications, money transfers, data storage and the interpretation of digital data. The digital revolution is disrupting much of public and private life as we knew it in the 20th Century. Power is shifting from the State and the large institution and into the hands of the individual. A 20-year-old with a smartphone, a YouTube channel or Facebook account and an Internet connection can shape public opinion on an equal footing as a leading television station or daily newspaper. The Covid-19 lockdown brought forward by about seven years the digital adoption and transformation already underway around the world and in Uganda. The 2020-2021 scientific election campaign served notice of what is to come. The 2026 general election, from the presidency to the LC I will be contested mainly on the digital platform frontier. The 2020 Covid-19 lockdown forced most schools to experiment with online learning. Many companies and government institutions realised that the only way they would conduct business during a lockdown was by video-conferencing. A sophisticated knowledge of digital technology in all its intricate detail, from identifying hackers to securing passwords, tracing a post or link to its source are now absolute requirements for the police and other security services in this Internet era. Given the growing importance of technology and its inevitable present and future dominance, it seemed odd for President Museveni to select a Cabinet of mainly loyal cadres but most of whom are not exactly known to be tech-savvy. Also, the new Cabinet will not deliver because of the personal methods of work by President Museveni himself. The Cabinet will not deliver because Museveni does not expect it to deliver. Just recently in late April during NRM partys retreat at Kyankwanzi, Museveni told the new Parliament to attend to government business without delay, warning that he will not hesitate to bypass Parliament and use his Executive powers where need be. While that statement in Kyankwanzi was directed at Parliament, indirectly it suggests that Museveni will also expect his Cabinet to approve proposed policies or investments without question. NRM cadres and officials are not nave about their place in the State. Most know that Museveni is the alpha male in the pride of lions and his word is always final. He is believed to use his ministers and MPs for his political ends and they too have learnt to use the Museveni political brand for their own local political ends or personal financial benefit. The formula, high-ranking NRM officials have learnt, is to lie low, act dumb, tow the party line and do not show any ambition for the NRM partys and the Republic of Ugandas top office. If you observe these unwritten rules, you will get away with anything under NRM Uganda. You will evade taxes, abuse your office, enjoy the perks of government office and will benefit your family. Musevenis method of work and operation is itself the reason his Cabinet will not deliver. He has recently publicly bragged about his guerrilla methods, his operating underground and in the shadows, even as head of State. Whenever he is confronted by a challenge or crisis in the running of government, Museveni tends to deflect the blame from himself and onto his aides and officials. He then either personally intervenes and micro-manages the situation, personally making phone calls or arriving on the scene to take charge, or he creates a new unit or appoints a new officer to handle the point of crisis. So, the answer to the low revenue collection of the Ministry of Finance Department of Inland Revenue is to create the Uganda Revenue Authority in 1991. The answer to the laxity in the Ministry of Works is to create Uganda National Roads Authority. The answer to the ineffectiveness by the Inspectorate of Government is not to give the IGG real, decision-making powers but to appoint Lt Col Edith Nakalema to head a parallel such unit in State House. The result is that in State House there is a replication of the entire government of Uganda structure, with units and desks to handle or investigate the mainstream government ministries. Many government institutions have a parallel unit or body that reports directly to Museveni. When that parallel unit inevitably gets frustrated as was the government body before it, Museveni creates yet another unit to run alongside the second unit and it too reports directly to him. Hence the endless turf wars, intrigue and power struggles within the Museveni court. Hence the widespread public belief that there is a mafia, a shadowy kitchen Cabinet that really runs Ugandas affairs and calls all the shots and that the formal 80-person Cabinet is simply part of the political window-dressing necessary to give Ugandas different regions and ethnic groups the illusion that they are fully represented. In fact, the very way the NRM State is run and the fact that the new Cabinet will mostly play yes men and yes women to President Museveni is why Uganda needs a newspaper called Daily Monitor. For all its many faults, Daily Monitor is no longer just another media house or publishing company. It is one of the last remaining spheres of true influence in Uganda. It is one of the few centres of information or opinion in the country that President Museveni reads keenly, gets irritated by what he reads but it sets him thinking and, most importantly, causes him to respond with an explanation or clarification as he did on national TV last Sunday. He will periodically order the paper shut down and editors and reporters arrested or summoned by the police, but he never bans it for good. Insulated by decades in power and by a cadre of aides eager to tell him what they think he wants to hear, Daily Monitor is one of the few remaining entities that can give Museveni an unvarnished, factual look at the true state of the country. He will need this paper, because his new Cabinet and the new NRM-majority Parliament are not going to speak much truth to power.