Unfortunately, hardly two weeks later, on 28th April, another episode occurred when two TV reporters were brutalized by military police while covering a protest in Kayunga. How’s that for a ‘new error’ of working relations! If the match had been any consolation, well, at least the newsmen carried out some sort of cosmetic revenge by thumping the Generals!
Obviously, winning a soccer game can’t be quite as good as achieving a moral victory. If the supposed essence of the match was to make amends between the two sides, then there shouldn’t have been an additional incident happening that soon. Unless of course the April event was merely a PR stunt; an attempt to portray the bigwigs in positive light while at the same time compensating for their juniors’ indiscipline.
Luckily, the fame of it didn’t last and couldn’t in the least conceal what is widely known to be this nation’s deeply-ingrained totalitarian system; where security operatives are generally the face of human rights violations, the administration of justice is rotten to the core, the politicians are mostly self-serving and desperately corrupt, and the citizens are somewhere at the bottom of the food chain.
Fundamentally, a free press functions as a force that monitors events and processes in order to ensure that the individuals that have been placed into positions of leadership are not using their authority to abuse the people they ought to be serving. So, basically, the journalists are the public’s eyes and ears on the ground.
Any form of attack on media practitioners can be viewed as an attempt to muzzle them, which effectively destroys the ecosystem of a democratic society by obstructing the flow of vitally important information to the citizens.
As a fresh political term takes effect with newly-elected leaders getting sworn into office, it’s a bit difficult to imagine that there will be a sudden paradigm shift; least of all, that these leaders will actually take their oaths seriously and promote the welfare of the people of Uganda.
In an already battered economy, the average Ugandan is struggling to recover from the blight that the coronavirus pandemic created on their livelihood. This did not, for example, stop the honorable Members of Parliament from approving an additional tax levy on fuel and the internet, furthering heaping an awesome burden on the ordinary citizen.
These same MPs are some of the most highly paid on the continent. With their massive salaries and ever-swelling allowances, the legislators are clearly detached and cushioned from the miseries of the people they purport to represent.
Quoting from Proverbs 29:2, Prophet Elvis Mbonye warned the politicians in May 2020, saying, “Uganda will turn out to be a reflection of either the righteous being in authority, in which the people rejoice, or the wicked bearing rule, in which case the people moan!”
The status quo appears to suggest the obvious. However, it remains up to the incoming leadership to choose whether during their term of service to the people of Uganda, they’ll be fondly known as righteous or, like their predecessors, blacklisted as wicked!
This article has also featured in the Nile Post: https://nilepost.co.ug/2021/05/11/righteousness-or-wickedness-which-way-will-our-politicians-choose/
