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Uganda: Three NRM Think Tanks; How About a National Think Tank?
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The Monitor (Kampala)
COLUMN
16 May 2008
Posted to the web 15 May 2008
Omar Kalinge Nnyago
The other week, we decried the loss of respect for knowledge in our society- useful knowledge. We lamented that even in university halls of residence, students would rather compete in knowing what Beyonce or Akon had for breakfast, than when Mazrui's last book was published.
We also empathised with the well educated persons we know who must pretend to be dumb, in order to survive in the system in which only sycophants survive better. And we prayed with them that perhaps one day, there will be a leadership in Uganda that values knowledge and competence.
Our argument was and still is that this was not a coincidence. It is a calculated move by the ruling clique to keep the population shallow in thought and therefore unable to ask the real questions.
It is hoped that one-day there will be a leadership that won't seek to survive through triviality. That it will have depth enough not to compete with the population in running markets, boda bodas, taxis, supplying meat to the city abattoirs, exporting maize until the prices shoot through the roof, thus making the president very happy.
Then on Sunday, some 'wonderful' news came. "NRM party plans three think tanks" (Sunday Monitor, May 11, 2008). Better late than never. Except that the idea that a political party which has been in power for 23 years is only attempting to create some think tanks this May says a lot about the reasons why Uganda is in perpetual confusion under the NRM.
The Sunday Monitor story ends well: "Proponents of the think tank idea believe that if the President listens, then the party will begin functioning as a party and lessen the burden on him by doing the thinking." Earlier, the story had heralded the creation of the three think tanks as "... the first major step towards wrestling the thinking function of the party from its leader, President Museveni."
From the above, three questions ought to be asked. One, is it really true it is Museveni alone in the NRM who does all the thinking? If it is true, then we have been blessed with a genius in our midst. This is probably the reason why he should rule Uganda forever, and upon his inevitable death, Uganda might have to be dissolved. Where shall we get another genius to lead us, fellow countrymen?
On a serious note, however, this fits in well with the "Museveni is Superman" image that his sycophants like to sell to the public, especially to a good number of the peasants who can't read newspapers. I refuse to buy this myth of an irreplaceable all thinking president.
I want to believe NRM has had think tanks all through. Especially this one which knows how to win an election without being popular. And which plans how to crush opposition figures by inventing fictitious charges against them, manufacturing evidence against them, and destroying opposition businesses as it wins all the city market tenders.
For those of you who were old enough during the 1996 presidential elections, it is this think tank, perhaps, which published that heap of skulls in the government newspaper as an election campaign advert to scare the population from voting another candidate. This skull thing is one of the most detestable campaign adverts of all time.
The second question is: are the think tanks being created behind the president's back? Must he be persuaded to listen? If he doesn't listen, will the think tanks become rebel outfits within the NRM, or they will wind up quietly in order not to displease the great leader?
By describing the attempt to establish the think tanks as an important step in "wrestling" the thinking function from the party president, the think tanks might be interpreted by the president as an act of war on monopoly as "party thinker."
But perhaps he really wants the three think tanks to be established. If so, my third question becomes relevant. Once created, will he allow them function anyway? Given the testimonies of presidential advisers for whom we pay through the nose to maintain, who have never met the president even once in five years to offer their advice, it is not likely that the think tanks will have occasion to be really useful to the party, or the president.
I think, though, that what Uganda badly needs is a National Think Tank. Such a think tank should be apolitical, answerable to no political leader, but to the national conscience and aspirations.
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It should be constantly searching for the best Ugandan brains who live in the country and abroad, to help the nation benefit from their knowledge.
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