After visiting the Vocation school today, we went to the Inspector General of Government. Unfortunately, because the Inspector General was out of the country, we talked to the Director of Legal Affairs. In the beginning of his lecture, he talked about what the IGG does, what it helps prevent, and the definition of corruption. The definition according to him was, "Abuse of public office for personal gain, embezzlement, theft of funds, fraud, etc." Personally, I felt like he addressed the amount of corruption within the country excessively. However, he also addressed the different acts that have been enacted within the past ten years. Each of these acts either allowed the prosecution and arrest of those who committed crimes of corruption by the IGG, and allowed the country to see the information provided by the government. He also described the mass quantities of money that have been embezzled. According to the world bank in 2008, 70% of government contracts we're not rewarded. He also read from the constitution from 1995 the whole time. This personally made me feel like he really didn't understand what was going on and made the presentation very slow and uncreative. Not that this type of presentation needs to be "creative," but I felt like he didn't really know what to talk about and spun in circles a lot. Did anyone else feel like he was contradictory and any point in his speech? What did he say?
All facts aside, I personally found that the IGG of Uganda does not make the country sustainable. A successful system of checks and balances allows for laws to be passed in a positive way. The current system gives all power to the president without checks and balances. That being said, the question that was asked about the outside resources for help really bothered me. He continued to argue that the reason that they can't stop all of the corruption because there isn't enough funding from the government. However, with how corrupt the government is, why would they fund a program or person to try and stop them? If they need funding, I personally feel like the funding needs to be from an outside source. What do you guys feel about this?
Other Questions:
- Do you think the IGG relates to sustainable development?
- How else should they try to stop corruption in the country?
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You really did a great job in your post! It was an interesting presentation... I don't know if I would say he was contradictory but his presentation was mainly factual. It frustrated me that he sat there and read from that sheet of paper rather than get in the heart of real and current problems in Uganda. I honestly feel that the IGG is not a significant contribution to Uganda's society. How can you have a government pay for an organization to investigate the corruption of government officials? I also agree that implementing a private corporation would be the best decision in order to see that government officials are properly and throughly investigated. Another point I found interesting was that the President is not allowed to be investigated for corruption while serving a term, that he/she has total immunity. What is the point of investigating after the plots and "corruption" has already been in progress? There should always be checks for all government officials.
ReplyDeleteI worry that the IGG has corruption within itself...which I believe there is an employee who is being investigated right now. The whole concept of the government funding a program to stop government corruption just doesn't make sense to me! It is well known that corruption within the government is common here, so why are they funding something to try and stop it? I honestly feel as if it is just to appear as if they are taking steps to stop it to appeal to the public. I could be completely wrong, as I did not hear a lot of the presentation. I just feel there could be further, more strict, ways of preventing or trying to stop corruption. Corruption is holding back Uganda's sustainable development!
ReplyDeleteI thought the entire presentation was us chasing his office through a maze of loopholes and constitutional clauses. I am sure that the IGG office does do a lot of good work in fighting corruption in some of its forms, like money laundering, but it seems like as to bigger picture issues such as election tampering and buying legislative votes they pay no attention. Obviously to have long term sustainablity a country needs to be able to hold free and fair elections and the IGG never mentioned anything as to that. I think that an outside organization to supplement the IGG and widen its gaze as to the corruption it is able to address!
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with the fact that the government should not be funding to find corruption in itself. If they had an outside source looking at corruption, they would be better off in making sure that no government employees were causing the corruption themselves. Uganda could be on a stronger path to finding sustainable development if they did not have the level of corruption that they do. If they really want their country to be developing sustainably, they need to reevaluate their present ways of finding corruption.
ReplyDeleteIn all honesty I had trouble respecting the credibility of the man who talked to us. Not only was he wearing a giant fake gold ring with a dollar sign on it, but every time he would talk about investigating corruption with the president he would snicker to himself. It's like he knew he was lying to us about having any power over the president but he couldn't just come out and say it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, playing devil's advocate here, I can see how giving the president some sort of immunity is necessary. With Uganda's history of military coups and government takeovers the president needs some sort of security so that they may go about their job without fear of a getting prosecuted unjustly by someone looking to get them out of office. The decisions the president has to make are not always easy, and people won't always be happy, but that's part of the job. If the president had to worry about being prosecuted for every "bad" decision they made, nothing would ever get done. The new Constitution of 1995 - the first constitution to state the full equality of men and women - would have never happened if the president didn't have some sort of immunity while they are in office.