ANDREW MWENDA QUOTES: MUHOOZI’S PRESIDENCY HAS TO GO THROUGH A RIGHTFUL CRITERIA

Indexed: 2026-05-21

[00:00:02]I would prefer to I would prefer to be that way.

[00:00:07]But if Moses ever to become president of Uganda, you know very well that he has to go through a particular process, which is the process of being elected as president, in which case the NRA and PLU would be the institutions through which he can run But you have ignored Come guys ask questions there and you have shoved them under the carpet.

[00:00:29]>> [laughter] >> The question is your comment.

[00:00:32]There's a guy there from Uganda who was saying something serious and I want to comment on it.

[00:00:38]Then I'll come to a Museveni presidency.

[00:00:44]You see Uganda is caught up in a very very serious contradiction. It is both a political and moral contradiction.

[00:00:53]Let me begin by being sympathetic to members of parliament.

[00:00:58]To win a parliamentary seat in Uganda requires you to raise money. True.

[00:01:02]That's not just in Uganda. I'll give you an example of the United States. They had an election in 2024.

[00:01:09]Isn't it 2026? Yes, 2024.

[00:01:12]88% of all the senators who won spent more money than their rivals.

[00:01:20]93% of members of the House of Representatives who won spent more than their rivals.

[00:01:26]Now, it's a difficult to know the chain of causation.

[00:01:29]Is it that when you spend a lot of money you win or that when you are very popular more money comes to you?

[00:01:35]So, is money the driver of victory or is it is a potential victory the magnet for money?

[00:01:44]But the two could also be self-reinforcing.

[00:01:46]So, an American philosopher called Will Durant, whom I have hold in high esteem, wrote saying that the three forms of government that have been known to man and are durable.

[00:01:58]One is theocracy, ruled by religious clerics. The other is aristocracy, ruled by birth. And the third is democracy, ruled by money.

[00:02:06]So, Uganda has pursued democracy, which is ruled by money. So, across the world where you have democratic contestation, people have to raise money to reach voters, to campaign, and win.

[00:02:17]Now, let me come to developed countries. In developed countries, you have civic institutions like trade unions, cooperative unions, business associations, business pressure groups, which raise money and fund candidates because those candidates represent their ideological and policy preferences.

[00:02:38]In Uganda, we don't have such developed institutions to raise money. So, if a man wants to run for an election, he must either go to friends to raise money, or he must deplete his assets uh by either his savings, either he sells his house, or gets a loan from a bank, and runs an election. It's self-funded largely.

[00:02:58]Now, if he sells his house at $1 million in Bugolobi and goes to run, that's 3.7 billion, and wins, he must have an expectation to recover that money. In actually, the right word is to recoup that money.

[00:03:15]How does Omara recoup that money? Either he must get a ministerial appointment so that he has actual power and be in a position to receive bribes, or he must lobby to sit on a powerful oversight committee of Parliament like PAC and whatever it is, so that these civil servants who come to have their budgets approved, to have their accounts cleared, hm?

[00:03:44]can bribe him or her.

[00:03:48]So, from the very foundation of our democratic system is that you have to have a corrupt parliament. Now, outside there people moralize and I tell you one of the problems I have with us African elites is our inability to get the inherited models of democracy that we have borrowed from the Western world and contextualize it them in our context and you remove muzungu lenses, European lenses and look at it as Africans. That is one. Two, every person seated here knows if Amara went to his constituency or not, every person there will be asking them for money.

[00:04:20]There is a funeral, they want Amara to pay.

[00:04:22]There is a wedding, Amara must raise money. There is a church fundraising, Amara Amara must raise money. Someone has died from the constituency, he must pay for transportation. There is a funeral, he must pay for something. This is from your personal money.

[00:04:34]How do Ugandans expect any member of parliament to sustain their constituency in the face of a a a a cultural attitude that the member of parliament is the go-to person whenever you have a personal or community problem. A funeral, a wedding, a fundraising at the church, a road, a school, practically everything.

[00:04:55]So, the pressure on an MP in Uganda is so high that if you're elected twice as an as a backbencher, the chances that you can win a third straight election without a a cabinet appointment is so low. So, I'll give you example. In the other parliament Mhm.

[00:05:13]the election of 2026, out of 529 members of parliament, well, not 526, I think.

[00:05:21]>> 529. 529. Only 105 had been in the parliament of 2016-2021.

[00:05:29]This so, more than 83% of sitting members of parliament, what they call incumbents, had lost an election.

[00:05:36]Why? Because those who can sit in the cabinet and those who can get access to money to run a next election and win are very few.

[00:05:44]Only 17% were reelected. This is the first time for about 30% of incumbent MPs were reelected. This is the first time.

[00:05:55]2020 uh six six I How many incumbents have been reelected? Out of 529, something like 180.

[00:06:04]Oh, 200 were returned. It's a very high number, unprecedented.

[00:06:09]So, if you're going to analyze members of parliament, let me come to even Anita Among. You remember I'm very critical of Anita Among, but I criticize her with sympathy.

[00:06:19]Why am I sympathetic to her?

[00:06:21]Anita Among was the quintessential democrat or democratic person. She had the intuition to know that managing parliament and securing the vote requires a lot of money.

[00:06:32]Where her political module is that she failed to appreciate that as a public servant, there is an image you must give of being responsible and ascetic.

[00:06:46]Ascetic meaning you uh You know, you buy you get a Rolls-Royce.

[00:06:51]Whether you bought it or not, it doesn't matter. You build these gorgeous mansions in Kololo, in Nakasero, in Kigo. I think those things really destroyed her credibility and her profile as a leader.

[00:07:04]And as I have told you earlier, I don't think her problem was corruption. In fact, I think she reduced the amount of money being spent by the president on parliament.

[00:07:12]And most of the money she took out of parliament was not for her personal use.

[00:07:16]It was to lubricate, to grease the wheels of democratic politics in parliament.

[00:07:23]Now, let me warn you, people. Um If a speaker comes in Uganda and does not deploy any money to get votes in parliament, and Norbert Mao is my great grandson from Acholi.

[00:07:38]Me, you know, I am the root of Acholi.

[00:07:43]There are three stools foundations on which power is built.

[00:07:48]First is the power ideological power. That is the power to persuade.

[00:07:55]The second pillar of power is economic power, the power to bribe.

[00:08:01]The third pillar of power is coercive power, military power, the ability to coerce.

[00:08:06]So, assuming I cannot persuade you, then I can try to bribe you.

[00:08:10]If I can't bribe you, I must call the army and whip your ass. Oh, sorry for my French.

[00:08:17]So, that you you fall in line. I wallop you. Yes. I spank you. So, So, those are the three pillars of power. Now, the problem with NRM is that when Museveni went to the bush, there was no prospect that he would win power.

[00:08:33]It was a limited prospect. The both had over holding power over military. The Tanzanian troops were here. So, that was one. Two, he had no salaries to pay people. So, he could not use financial incentives.

[00:08:45]He had no accommodation to provide. He had no good quality food to give. Why did people abandon their educations, abandon their businesses, abandon their families, abandon their careers to join him in the bush and face hunger, starvation, risk of death. Some of them lose their limbs, others even their lives.

[00:09:03]Because Museveni sold a great idea. That time it was called Siasa, to liberate the country from tyranny, to transform to liberate the country, the economy from foreign control, to make Uganda a democratic, prosperous, human rights respecting country, right?

[00:09:18]Those were great ideals and people followed him in droves and he succeeded.

[00:09:23]What I've never understood about this great giant of a man called Museveni, a victor in a hundred battles, a titan of strategy, when he came into power, he abandoned Siasa, what I would call ideology as a foundation of his support. And retreated to the use of money almost and either bribery and repression.

[00:09:46]And retreated from persuasion. So, if persuasion constituted 70% of his struggle in the bush, then bribery 10% and coercion 20.

[00:09:57]Now he has bribery 60 70% coercion 30%.

[00:10:03]Persuasion 10%. I would need to understand what are the structural incentives that drove him to that.

[00:10:09]Maybe this in your liberal ideology that it is money that should be the foundation of everybody's pursuit. Everybody in Uganda is fighting to get money. So, Anitah Among Anitah Among is a reflection of the kind of politics first of all NRM has promoted, but most especially the kind of politics that democracy will tend to foster in a backward country, a poor country.

[00:10:34]Let me put it this way. Now, let me give you another example. Why I'm very critical of democracy the way it is designed in Uganda and I will give you circumstances in which we need to reform our democratic system if it is to serve us better.

[00:10:47]The longest serving democracy in a poor context in the world is a country called India. It is the largest democracy and it's only a poor country with a low per capita income that has sustained democracy over a period of 80 years.

[00:10:59]Next year they make it 80 years of democracy.

[00:11:04]The Carnegie Endowment did a study it's titled When Corruption Pays.

[00:11:10]Please search it on Amazon, buy it. When Corruption Pays.

[00:11:14]And they were looking at the 2014 elections in India. And this is what they found. India has a parliament of 630 members, 1.4 billion people. So, it should tell you Uganda with 50 million we have a parliament of 500. The other guys with 1.4 billion they have a parliament of 630. So, India has a parliament of 630. There were six 2,000 candidates for those 630 seats.

[00:11:40]2,000 candidates. Over those 2,000 candidates, 700 had criminal charges on them. 700.

[00:11:47]168 of the MPs who won, which is 1/3 of the entire parliament, had criminal charges on them. 33 won an election from jail. They were in jail.

[00:11:56]Let me make it brief for you. The Carnegie Endowment concluded from their study they found that in every election the share of criminals in parliament grows by 2% every election.

[00:12:08]And a person with criminal charges on them has a a three times higher chance of winning than an honest nobody now.

[00:12:15]So, the more you consolidate democratic competition and contestation, the more you will in a poor context you will likely to increase criminality.

[00:12:23]Now, what was their conclusion? They said, "You see, if you look at the Nordic countries or European countries, first they first developed institutions of capitalism, transformed from being agrarian societies into modern industrial countries. The per capita income increased, the level of education increased. Once they had transformed from backward countries into advanced countries, democracy was instituted on top of strong state institutions, strong political cultural values and traditions that are embedded in the society. And that is why democracy worked well for them. And they say that this is this democracy was transplanted onto an entirely different social structure in India, which did not have those deeply entrenched institutions and cultural traditions that can mitigate the effect of electoral competition on politics.

[00:13:13]And that is why, while democracy in in Norway may promote public-spirited individuals, in India it was promoting criminality.

[00:13:21]When you talk about India, isn't it Uganda?

[00:13:24]Keep increasing the participation and contestation.

[00:13:27]I have seen it here. In the 1990s, these men were public-spirited individuals and they were not into money.

[00:13:34]There was James Wapakhabulo, Bidandi Ssali, Kironde Kaweerere, and Area Kateregga. These were decent men.

[00:13:42]But, as the political contestation has increased, the desire to raise money and win has increased.

[00:13:49]Con men, sharks, robbers, crooks have [laughter] Every day they increase their share in the parliament.

[00:13:59]As they increase their share, the kind of speaker you get who is effective is one who employs the money. So, I feel like Anita Among is a victim rather than architect of the problem we are witnessing. You can arrest her.

[00:14:17]You can do anything, but the question for me is you need to get a speaker who grabs that money and brokers deals in politics, but it does not build mansions. So, that is form, but not substance. The substance of the coexisting democratic system of Uganda is that the political system is built on corruption. In fact, corruption is the grease or the fuel that turns the wheels of the democratic politics. And if you suck it out, the whole thing will come crashing down like a ton of bricks. But, you mentioned first it started with the the honorable Norbert Mao when he said the person of the speaker becomes the character of the parliament.

[00:14:58]Both PLU and the NRM have different angles at which they're looking at this.

[00:15:02]It's politics on one side, it is performance on the other. The two of them in that parliament with the majority, what does that mean? Are we waiting to see a clash between two different ideologies?

[00:15:15]So, what I was explaining to you, my great grandson Timothy, is that what we need is structural change.

[00:15:21]If we keep the system the way it is right now, we are unlikely to resolve the problem.

[00:15:26]I tell you if or both or both my grandson or both or both, let me be your prophet of doom.

[00:15:32]Should you go to that parliament, there's a man I sat with you called Paul Musoke. I told him I'm going to kick him out.

[00:15:37]>> [laughter] >> So, let me also be or both or both his prophet of doom.

[00:15:40]You become speaker there and you don't have the skills to raise money and address the financial problems of every single member of parliament, you won't get the vote. You will not even help the president achieve his goals. So, you'll either either have to acquire those skills, but I'm happy the president has sustained to Thomas Tayebwa because he's skilled at it. He knows it.

[00:16:02]What Uganda needs to do is first, we need to liberate the individual MP called Norbert Mao and Amara here from facing the constituency. I believe you Uganda needs proportional representation. You find it in South Africa, Welcome to DP. Yes. You find it in South Africa, you find it in Europe, you find it in Rwanda.

[00:16:22]Where political parties contest as parties, not as individuals.

[00:16:26]Now, the vote the share of votes you get if you get 50% of the votes as a party, you'll have a list from number one. Let me assume the parliament is only 100 members.

[00:16:36]And DP got 50% of the vote, it will have a list of 100 people from number one to number 100. The first 50 take over the seats in parliament.

[00:16:46]The when this party got 10 seats 10% of the vote, it will have a list of 100.

[00:16:51]The first 10 got seats in parliament because of 10%.

[00:16:55]Why is that important? It means that none of these people on the list needed to go directly and bribe voters because they're not Voters don't elect individuals, they elect parties.

[00:17:05]So, bribery may not be eliminated, will be minimized. Of course, I have my friends who could say this is They say, "Look, Andrew, if who draws up that list?" It means that you are shifting power from the general electorate to the party bosses.

[00:17:20]The So, bribery will shift from bribing the multitude of voters to bribing a small number of party bosses, party leaders who draw the list and say "Mao should be number one. Mao should be number seven. Mao should be number 49."

[00:17:35]You may not get 49% of the vote, in which case that is in terms of redistribution, redistribution of income, you have shifted income from a multitude of uh 20 million Ugandan voters, right?

[00:17:47]Mhm. to a small group of maybe hundreds, a few hundred, uh party bosses. So, it has a weakness, but that weakness I am willing to suffer it that cost if only it reduces the incentive of MPs to sell their properties, raise money.

[00:18:02]Let me come to the second point. So, Andrew Mwenda sold his house and went and won an election, and he needs to recover the money. But, you're asking Andrew Mwenda to hold public officials to account, yet Andrew Mwenda's interest is to recover his money by actually using his position in PAC, Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, to insist that Mao, who came as permanent secretary to Ministry of Defense, and there are reports of the Auditor General showing that he stole money.

[00:18:25]I want Andrew Mwenda wants to sell wants Mao, who has come as a permanent secretary, right? Mhm. but has issues.

[00:18:35]Mao's interest is to ensure that his corruption is hidden.

[00:18:40]So, he gives me a bribe on PAC. How can I How can So, the parliamentary oversight committees cannot perform their function in our context because then they also become part of the layers of corruption. The same applies to PPDA, IGG, this anti-corruption thing at State House. Because if I'm an official of IGG's office, and we are going to investigate so-and-so. Assuming that person gives me money. The government salary they pay me, the bribe may be my salary for the next four years. Thank you.

[00:19:10]>> What is my choice? So, so, the first thing for me is to liberate, to create proportional representation to liberate our democratic process from from individual constituencies so that no individual is under pressure to pay bills and of course it is. The final thing I wanted to comment about this proportional representation.

[00:19:31]DP will be incentivized to get the best of its best actually to be on the list.

[00:19:37]NRM would get the best of the best.

[00:19:40]Right now, riffraffs are the ones who are winning. So, now put yourself in President Museveni's shoes. Now I have to sympathize with the president.

[00:19:46]It is these con men, crooks, and whatevers who win huge majorities and deliver the vote. So, if you are president and appointing cabinet, who would you pick? Some honest man out there with no political constituency?

[00:19:56]What does he bring on the table? Or guys who have actually won an election? And as we say in India, the the increasing share of criminals and incompetents this parliament, you go and look at their CVs. It's not a very serious parliament. So, the president himself is constrained in the number of people in the the pool of people from which he can select high-credentialed individuals to lead ministries.

[00:20:19]And that is a challenge Uganda is facing that ultimately for us to have honest people, people of integrity, and competent people to be ministers, we need them we need to end this constituency voting and go to proportional representation. That's my final thing, my grandson. I'm sorry I have taken Honorable Mao.