President Yoweri Museveni has vowed that the fight against corruption is in his hands and just waiting for evidence and action will be taken in crashing the culprits.
He however, urged the youths not to demonstrate, citing funding from foreign opportunists.
“The fight against corruption is in my hands. I just need evidence and action will be taken,” Museveni said.
However, Museveni has severally cited the accounting officers and those doing procurement jobs as the ring-leaders of corruption since they are the guardians of government money.
Museveni noted that Tuesday’s demonstration had two bad elements, one of which was funding from foreign sources that are always meddling in the internal affairs of Africa for the last 600 years ─ slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism, genocide, economic exploitation, etc.
“All those involved in the demonstration should know that Uganda is not a neo-colony where those shallow schemes can be deployed,” Museveni said.
He added that the second element was that some of the authors and participants of the demonstrations were planning very bad things against the people of Uganda. Those very bad things will come out in court when those arrested are being tried. It is possible that some of the participants did not know of the planned foreign funding and the planned bad things.
Museveni cautioned that the demonstrators would have listened to the police advice, not to go on with the demonstration though they rubbished the police advice.
He further noted that if the demonstration was a patriotic, anti-corruption, peaceful move, coordinated with the Police, he would have been the first to join.
Museveni reiterated that planners of Tuesday’s demonstration, however, were not bothered with such issues and yet he had politely advised them a few days ago, in the address to the Nation.
“They, obviously, thought that my advice was of no consequence. Please, Ugandans avoid these mistake makers. The evidence in court will shock many. As I said, above, the planners of these demonstrations wanted to do very bad things. The charge by the Police of “idle and disorderly”, I suspect, was used because the deployed personnel did not have all the information. This was a high-quality, intelligence-led operation. I have most of the information,” he said.
He also related to the 20219 march against corruption organized by Edith Nakalema in coordination with police and other security agencies which was peaceful and successful.
“Indeed, in the year 2019, Nakalema organized us and we marched from the city Square through Kampala Road to Jinja Road and went to Kololo. So many people were there- Bishops, Soldiers, Wanainchi, etc. I thought that Nakalema had timed a Sunday because there was neither traffic, nor pedestrians on the road. Nakalema has now told me that it was a Wednesday, the 4th of December, 2019, but that they had organized with the police to block traffic for some hours,” he said.
He has directed Nakalema to co-ordinate with the genuine anti-corruption fighters for a similar effort, especially on a Sunday.
He advised that the heavily populated suburbs of the cities – Kawempe, Bwaise, etc. should never be used for demonstration, because they will damage the little wealth creation that the people are painstakingly building up and Kololo ceremonial grounds, is being repaired now but when the work is finished, Nakalema should organize and assured that he will be there.
“However, those being funded by foreigners, should stop and report to the Minister of State for Ethics, those that have been funding them. We shall not arrest them. In any case, we know a lot about the goings on in those groups. Our interest is to immunize Uganda against the schemes of the imperialists and their agents,” he urged.
