By Hon James Kaberuka Ruugi Niringiyimana!
Your Excellency, receive my warm greetings.
I pen this letter with pain, bleading in my heart, first as an NRM cadre but also as a Member of Parliament who represents my people, whose views sadly are being discarded by your leadership.
Your comments in the recent NRM caucus meeting in which you referred to those of us opposed to the now Controversial Coffee Bill as criminals left me bewildered but also wondering whether we are still a democracy or not!
Fast forward, I did not attend this NRM caucus which turned out to be a tour of your farm by the MPs! The reason I didn’t attend was that in the previous caucus I had indicated to the Chief Whip Hon Hamson Obua that we should always be given an agenda before going for any meeting other than taking us sheep-shilly as if we don’t matter.
Your Excellency, I am sure that you have attended several meetings and Summits; be it United Nations, African Union, COMESA, EAC etc, I don’t think you can board a plane to New York or any other place to attend a meeting when you don’t know the agenda. Then why do you keep bundling NRM MPs to buses without even giving them an agenda of what they are going to discuss? Is it because you don’t respect your own MPs and the institution of Parliament? Is it because you don’t respect the voters who they represent in Parliament? Or is it because you think it’s only you who matters and everyone else can be treated as dregs?
Secondly the language that you used was uncalled for. The language of threatening those with divergent views and referring to them as being indiscipline and criminals is not called for in a democracy. You engage & dialogue with those dissenting against your opinion rather than subduing and crushing them!
Your Excellency, when we disagree it’s because we are looking at a specific issue from different perspectives, that doesn’t call for crushing us. In any case if we have done any crimes, then you can take us to courts of law other than blackmailing us with intentions to coerse us into submission.
Your Excellency, in one of your several missives, you have acknowledged that you were ‘sleeping’ until a team by Gen Salim Saleh and Ramathan Ggobi (current PSST) woke you up in 2016. You also acknowledged that your own agencies have been parasitic for years; that means that you acknowledge mistakes done by your own government. Why then is it hard for you to listen to others? In any case the reason you did those mistakes of creating “parasitic agencies” was because you did not listen to anybody. It’s because you took yourself as the Alfa and Omega and custodian of knowledge who does not listen to anyone else except your family!
What puzzles me is why you keep employing hundreds of Presidential Advisors yet you don’t listen to them. A case in point is Dr Ezra Suruma, a Presidential Advisor on Economic Affairs who advised against the controversial Coffee bill and instead of talking to him in order to understand his point of view, you simply brushed him off in the media. One therefore wonders why you even pay him as a Presidential Advisor if you have no regard for his advice?
Take note that Dr Suruma has on several occasions indicated how he opposed the sale of critical parastatals like the Uganda Commerical Bank when he was then serving as the Deputy Governor Bank of Uganda and still you didn’t listen to him, you later regretted your decision although you have never apologized to Ugandans!
Your Excellency, we don’t understand especially when you play double standards, preaching water while happily drinking wine. You claim that UCDA is parasitic and that’s why you want its operations under the Ministry yet last Financial Year you allocated 37 billion to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development (PACEID) purportedly to promote Uganda’s Coffee abroad. Why didn’t you put this money under the Ministry of Agriculture? Or the Uganda Export Promotion Board?
You continue to allocate billions to the many scattered outfits under your office namely; State House Health Monitoring Unit, State House Anti-Corruption Unit, State House Investors Protection Unit, State House Revenue Intelligence and Strategic Operations Unit among others. Why don’t all these be merged under the Inspectorate of Government if you indeed want to streamline government operations? Why do you struggle to remove agencies created by the law when you have many redundant outfits in your office which do not even require Parliamentary approval to remove?
Moreso do you have the moral authority of talking about wastage of money when you gave over 400bn to your friend Pinneti for a non existent Lubowa Specialized Hospital? When you gave over 530bn to Atiak Sugar and not even a single kilogram of sugar has been produced, is it not wastage? What about the 500 billions you have given to Roko Constructions?
Your Excellency, we want a convincing argument on why UCDA should be put under the Ministry against the will of farmers and other stakeholders. We need evidence that the Ministry of Agriculture which has failed to promote tea will not kill our coffee. That the Ministry which has failed to fight Foot and Mouth Disease has the capacity to manage our coffee to say the least!
We are not fighting rationalisation policy as Parliament, and that’s explains why we approved 90 percent of the bills you tabled before us, we are only asking you to be logical and rational on the UCDA!
Your Excellency the earlier you listened to Ugandans and act in their best interests, the better for our country. Taking such strategic mistakes ahead of a general election is not only detrimental to the NRM party but also to your own MPs!
Hon James Kaberuka Ruugi Niringiyimana, MP Kinkizi West, Kanungu District!
