Last week, while addressing civil servants in Hoima District, the Minister of State for Local Government, Perez Ahabwe, told them that they had no choice but to work towards President Museveni's re-election in 2011 or lose their jobs.

While it is an open secret that the NRM government encourages or at least keeps a blind eye on civil servants working for the ruling party, it doesn't make it right. Indeed what the minister is asking civil servants to do is wrong, unjust and illegal.

Civil servants are maintained by taxpayers to serve all Ugandans equally, regardless of their political affiliation. It is therefore tantamount to cheating for a public officer, maintained by the taxpayer, to use his privileged position to promote a partisan interest. It is worse when a Cabinet minister, who obviously knows better, blackmails civil servants into mobilising for the ruling party.

By telling the civil servants that those who work for the President will be promoted while those who work for the opposition will be fired, the minister is suggesting that those who don't support the ruling party have no right to employment.

Perez Ahabwe told his audience that since they are in power, they will turn a blind eye when NRM activists wearing civil servants' uniform are busted!

This is abuse of power and the Minister of Ethics and Integrity would do well to clarify on it. To tie one's ability on retaining his or her job not on competence but loyalty to the ruling party defeats the purpose for which the civil service exists.

This also implies that civil servants caught in the act of corruption, abuse of office or indiscipline will be forgiven as long as they declare themselves NRM supporters. That defeats the very fight against corruption that the minister purported to be championing on this particular trip.

Blackmail is definitely not the way for NRM to recruit supporters. Let the ruling party's good deeds speak for themselves and earn votes.