Keitetsi Florence

Negotiation is not an easy thing to talk about as the answer to Uganda's political quagmire. It is easy for Ugandans to hurry and buy into the idea because it seems that, finally, all our issues will be solved in one go. But when you investigate deeper, you realize that is not the case. This video is inspired by my friend @Joshua_lawel and an article he published today in The Observer. He is a very intelligent young man. Negotiations are based on the idea of utmost good faith, as with a contract in law: that the person you are entering into the contract with will honor their side of it at the end of the day. So let us look at the people asking us to negotiate. In 1985, before he became president, during the Nairobi Peace Accord, this man delayed accepting and endorsing an agreement. The Military Council had proposed signing a peace accord that would end the war in Uganda and let us focus on building a nation out of what colonialism had left us: divided by tribe, by political view, and by religion. Museveni saw this as an opportunity to trick them, come into Kampala, and overthrow the government. Then he came with a promise of fundamental change. He promulgated the 1995 Constitution, and on the floor of Parliament he told us it would be the best constitution this country had ever had, one that would end the evils Obote created: ruling the country by man, not by law. He spoke about militarization. He spoke about how so much power in the hands of the president made running the state hard, because the executive kept meddling in the affairs of the judiciary and the legislature. Forty years down the road, he has become the very man he described. By his own account of Obote, the two are now the same. And these are the people trying to put us on a hook to negotiate an end to their own injustices. As Lawel says, the rights of Ugandans are not to be negotiated. Their peace and freedom are not to be negotiated. These things are black and white. Release the political prisoners. Hold accountable those who committed injustices, even if it is your own son, the canb. Do it because it is the right thing to do. Then we can negotiate other issues, like how to live in a country with over 50 tribes, divided by different beliefs and norms. Those we can negotiate. But the rights and freedoms of people are not up for negotiation.

What will the morning after the dialogue look like for the opposition? observer.ug/viewpoint/what-w…

🚨 CEC member (Eastern) questioned the succession paper during the meeting of Oct 27.

Even the chairman is shocked, this time round a section of CEC members have expressed their dissatisfaction about PLU's way of shadowing NRM's activities!

Why should the constitution bar a person with dual citizenship from serving as a minister yet allows that same person to sit in Parliament as a Member of Parliament?. This distinction makes no logical or constitutional sense.

As senior journalist, do a better job than those excited keyboard warriors! You know KMC has produced more than 5 buses. Don’t mention the gross salaries without mentioning the number of staff! I doubt one would pay an engineer assembling electric buses like I pay my mechanic in Wandegeya! We want to develop our country to the level of the countries we admire at zero cost! Building systems alone is very expensive. I would like you to highlight what big companies spend initially to put up something like KMC is doing!

Accounting illiteracy applied to industrial policy. A factory is not a shop where you buy stock today and sell tomorrow.

Meet Ruby Solange Nekesa What would students choose to measure if they were in charge of monitoring the air at school? Ruby is the youngest member of our Public Square East Africa team and leads Sentinel 6, the school arm of the Uganda Clean Air Institutions Initiative (UCAII). In her COP31 photo story, she’ll show how high school students can decide where to monitor, share what they find and use that evidence to ask for cleaner air. If you’ve wondered how to start an air-quality project at your school, come hear from Ruby. 📍 19 Nov · 16:30 Antalya time · Higher Education for Climate Action Pavilion (A275), #COP31 Blue Zone @UChiEnergy #CleanAir #UCAII

The geopolitical situation is getting more complicated than it has ever been: it’s no longer East and West. In fact there is no East and West anymore. The USA and Western Europe, the traditional West is no longer as monolithic as it used to be and East which was generally associated with Russia (Soviet Union) no longer exactly exists; in its place there is China and Russia which are not militarily allied and not economically related. And then there is India which can no longer be ignored in international relations. And then there is Brazil which can also no longer be ignored; and then there is BRICS+. Advisories by the USA are therefore not as fatal as they used to be because the weight of the USA has been mitigated by the existence of a multiplicity of power centres in the world. More and more countries are now conducting transactions without US$ payments and that means that the world is becoming less and less dependent on the wishes and dictates of the US. However, when listening to the leaders in some of those countries, it seems that they haven’t internalized these actual realities of the world situation. That’s the background to the problem of USA, EU etc advisories. They indeed cause alarm as they have always done, but the actual harm is much less than it used to be because the changes outlined above. But nevertheless the efforts to have the advisories lifted should continue as many individuals get affected by them.