Uganda@50 draft report 2013-Uganda

2013

In ages when the best is expected after a long time of struggle, the worst crops up. Uganda has for long waited for a democratic transition of power from a leader to another but for the past 51 years it has remained history even with less or no signals of such to happen. Since Independence in October 1962, Uganda has had 8 presidents but has never had democratic transition of power. In this paper, I tend to disagree with a common argument that “Uganda’s democratic problem is so much connected to a number of ethnicities within the country”. My argument is; the problem is only the ideological perplexity of both Ugandans and the leaders in power that this argument has kept cropping up and affecting the democratic roots of the country. One may need to know that; no ethnic group what so ever would interfere with a strong democratic institution in a country. When a problem is for long breastfed, it grows to be a bigger problem and that has been the major problem for Uganda. In this paper will first of all look at the theoretical understanding of the concepts; democracy and democracy promotion. It will be based on that back ground that; the paper will then look at Uganda’s political history in terms of its democratic progress and or regress. However, in the paper I try to consider the fact that Uganda still has a number of democratic challenges hence an urgent need for democratic dispensation and consolidation. Therefore, the paper will also look at the progress and pitfalls in democracy promotion in Uganda since 1962 to date and provide possible solutions to the challenges. This every topic of study was found to be quite interesting based on the fact that even when Uganda as a country is said to be democratic, it seems to be stagnant somewhere in the process of democratic development. This touches its institutions and the entire process of power transition.

Public Administration and Development, 2004

The 1980s saw the emergence of popular participation as a mechanism for promoting good governance in developing countries Good governance was seen as crucial to efforts to improve the welfare of poor people in countries where elites had hitherto benefited disproportionately from policies conceived at the top without reference to ordinary citizens at the bottom. Donor pressure helped accelerate the change. In Uganda these developments coincided with the rise to power of a government that sought to democratise the country's politics. A major plank in the democratisation agenda was the establishment of a participatory system of local administration in which ordinary citizens, facilitated by local councils, would participate in public affairs and influence the way government functioned. These aspirations coincided with those of the donor community and enthusiasts of popular participation. This article is an account of the evolution of village councils and popular participation from 1986, when the National Resistance Movement came to power in Uganda, to 1996. It shows that while at the beginning the introduction of local councils seized the public's imagination leading to high levels of participation, with time, public meetings as consultative fora succumbed to atrophy due to participation fatigue and unwarranted assumptions about the feasibility and utility of popular participation as an administrative and policy-making devise. It calls for political history and the socio-cultural context to be taken into account in efforts to promote participation.

African Study Monographs, 1992

Uganda has experienced almost two decades of social, political and economic turmoil and turbulence since independence in 1962. In January 1986, the National Resistance 1\lovementlArmy (NRMIA) -a guerrilla grouping that had been at war for five years -assumed powers of government. on a :-adical platform of "fundamental change." Since that time, several developments have occurred in the mode of governance. public accountability, human rights observance and popular people's participation in self government.

2011

On the eve of turning 50 after independence, Uganda still faces the legitimacy challenge that dogged many African countries at independence, as ruling parties used state institutions to buy elections and the opposition, or to outlaw or jail competitors. Voter apathy in Uganda is growing, as elections become a façade which hides rural poverty. The country's international aid partners were complicit in planting autocracy. Neither existing civil society nor the opposition will by themselves initiate change; but they might help to pull the country from the brink if they act in concert with external actors and progressives within the ruling party. The path to credible democratic reform runs through massive aid cuts pending reform of electoral and public finance laws that, through classified budgets, allow a president to personalise the country's finances. However, that window is fast closing as the country starts to pump oil, making donors irrelevant. Badru Dean Mulumba has more than a decade of experience as a journalist in Eastern Africa, published largely by the Nation Media Group. Recently, he has worked as an editor, researcher and consultant in the Sudan Science and Technology at the

Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, 1987

International Journal, 1995

After more than 20 years of despair and chaos, Uganda seems to be surfacing slowly from a spiral of self-destruction at the same time as countries all around it have fallen to pieces or exhibit clear warning signs of doing so in the near future. Hope for the future is awakening among Ugandans and among analysts studying Uganda. Much of this hope springs from optimism about the regime of Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM). Since 1986, this broad-based transitional military regime has ruled Uganda via a system of Resistance Councils and Committees (RCS) which allow for both direct participation at the RC I (village) level and indirect representation at the RC 2 through 5 and National Resistance Council (NRC) levels. Although the NRM regime acquired power by force and from the 'bush' rather than peacefully, its purported grassroots decentralized approach to governance, accompanied by a degree of political and social stability, is unprecedented in Uganda. Uganda, however, is at a crossroads. In 1989 the NRM voted to extend its rule for another five years. In 1995 the regime's desire to retain a 'movement' type of system for yet another five years is pitted against external (mainly foreign donor) and limited societal pressures for political liberalization. A number of disturbing trends in NRM-ruled Uganda need to be examined.

2010

The topic of Presentation, is solicited and linked by the presenter, to a variety of suggested development topics, which bear profound concern and relevance to the concept of holistic human development, based on undiluted Democratic Governance. Holistic Development in general, as duly embracing the social and economic growth, in relation to developing countries, such as Uganda, bears a significant brotherhood, as well impacting relationship to undiluted democracy, where it is taken and emphasized as an inevitable basis and root of holistic human development.The selected topic of Democracy and Development significantly connote as well implies that democracy, in an un diluted form, is an inevitable basis of holistic human corporate development and that such development, should be rooted in the attributes of good, accountable, transparent, as well selfless positive democratic governance of a people. It is, therefore, to be noted that the functional practice and presence of democracy, or the profound lack of it, or presence of the same, in diluted unconventional forms and content, in a developing country, such as Uganda, in the defined aspects of human corporate, political, social and even cultural endeavors, does also add up to, as well imply a negative reversal of that development, whatever it may be.

This article briefly looks at Uganda at fifty and the strategies that must be taken at both the national and International level if its economy is to grow. International Economic Financial Institutions are called upon to support the development process of Uganda in fairer terms