Sam Akaki
14 September 2007
column
Or should the question be: Is Chogm a grand conspiracy by the United Kingdom and other [white] and [rich] Commonwealth countries to accelerate Uganda's present descent into a failed state economically, politically and socially?
As any secondary school student of economics knows, the opportunity cost of an action is "the monetary cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue another action; or the benefits you could have received by taking that alternative action".
According to Mr Austin Ejiet's light-hearted title to a deadly serious subject, the budget for hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (Chogm) has already reached Shs1 trillion, and is rising, ("Chogm, Hare and Obibi's gravy train", DM, September 4).
When asked in the British Parliament on May 17, 2007: "what the total cost will be of the three-day Commonwealth meeting in Uganda; how much will be met by the UK government"; the Foreign Office Minister Ian McCartney replied, "The government of Uganda will meet the full costs of hosting Chogm. The [British] government will [not] contribute [anything] to these costs.
Given that Uganda is facing catastrophic social, economic and political crises including explosive population growth; rapid deforestation; falling food production; violent scramble for land; increasing unemployment among graduates; growing rural-urban migration; power shortages; crumbling health, education and road infrastructure; over one million citizens who have been living in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps for the last 20 years; louder and wider complaints about ethnic marginalisation; political opponents dying or disappearing in detention; non-existent prospect for peaceful change through free and fair elections; calls for secession in Buganda and the north - all making lethal cocktail that will sure tear Uganda apart; one would expect hosting Chogm at a cost of one trillion shillings to be the last thing in the minds of Ugandan rulers and its western backers.
Incredibly, Chogm is going ahead with the same old and empty rhetoric as a theme: "Transforming Commonwealth societies to achieve political, economic and human rights".
The irreconcilable contradictions between Uganda's many crises, the empty theme of the meeting and its prohibitive cost begs several painful questions about the opportunity cost of hosting Chogm.
Why didn't we spend that money to resettle over one million men, women and children who have spent 20 years in camps; or create decent jobs for tens of thousands of graduates and other professionals who are working as security guards, hotel waiters, petrol station attendants, international drug traffickers, mercenaries in Iraq, or walking the streets looking for employment?
Why not spend the money to renovate Mulago Referral Hospital, and provide equipment and staff for the badly needed specialist units for treatment of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, neurological disorders and burns?
How many more new doctors, nurses, primary and secondary school teachers would be trained with this amount of money? What if some of the money had been spent on increasing the salaries for doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen, civil servants and university lecturers?
Why not spend the money on building one first class primary school in every parish, fully staffed with properly trained and remunerated teachers, and build one first class secondary school in every county, well equipped with science laboratories and fully staffed with properly trained and remunerated teachers?
Why not spend the money on providing descent accommodation for our police officers who are sharing one room with married colleagues?
Why not properly maintain or purchase brand new military transport vehicles to avoid frequent needless deaths in freak accidents?
Why not spend the money to recruit and train more judges and other judiciary officials to deal with the huge backlog of cases in which thousands of Ugandans are on remanded for alleged defilement, murder and treason without trial for decades?
Why not use the money to build at least two water boreholes in every parish throughout the country; or renovate the Owen Falls Dam and accelerate the construction of two or more hydro power stations to arrest the terrible power shortage?
Why not use the money to organise an effective population control programme including reproductive health education, safe pregnancy termination clinics, cash rewards to families with fewer than three children and imposing taxation on those with more?
Why not use the money to implement the recommendations of the Commonwealth Observer report to ensure free and fair elections in 2011 and avert the prospect for violence?
After all, the report declared that "So far as the electoral [process as a whole] is concerned, it is clear that the environment in which the elections were held had several negative features which meant that the candidates were not competing on a level playing field".
And why are we wasting all this money on an extravaganza with dubious benefits and yet the country is facing a clear and increasing catalogue of catastrophic crises? Why?
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