GLOBAL ONLINE PROTEST
nupadminOur Diaspora Leadership Team has written this letter to the Managing Director of IMF over plans to yet again extend over 1 billion dollars to the regime. There will be a global online protest this Friday to further this demand.
Ms. Kristalina Georgieva,
Managing Director
International Monetary Fund
1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20431
June 07, 2021
Dear Ms. Kristalina Georgieva,
Ugandans and friends of Uganda beseech you and the entire management of the International Monetary Fund to decline approving the proposed $1 billion ECF to Uganda due to its long-standing failure to account for public funds. In addition, the Ugandan regime is now considered illegitimate by most Ugandans.
On January 14, 2021, dictator Museveni lost a Presidential election — 54.19% to 34.83% per independent tallies — to principal challenger, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (aka Bobi Wine), though Museveni’s handpicked electoral commission declared him winner. The fraudulent declaration is currently being challenged in the East African Court of Justice with supporting evidence that was declined by a partisan Uganda Supreme Court.
It would be unconscionable for the IMF to allocate more funds to a regime so riddled with endemic corruption that the almost $1 billion that IMF, World Bank & other international donors allocated to Uganda in 2020 for Covid relief was either embezzled or misdirected towards military suppression of opposition political party supporters.
Some covid funds were channeled to Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa’s two daughters’ company which was awarded a contract to deliver Oxygen to Uganda’s hospitals, but failed to do so.
Meanwhile, Ugandans died (in 2020) and continue to die (June 2021) of Covid-19 due to lack of oxygen in hospitals.
Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa has himself been implicated in various corruption scandals in Uganda. And, in 2018, he was indicted in New York for accepting a bribe from a Chinese businessman in exchange for facilitating Chinese investment interests in Uganda.
https://observer.ug/news/headlines/68019-us-court-upholds-minister-sam-kutesa-briber-conviction
As this letter to Senator Coons from the New York Bar Association indicates, World Bank Covid relief money to Uganda was also misappropriated:
2020812-UgandaWorldBank.pdf
New York Review of Books article on how Covid relief funds were likely redirected towards military suppression, including during the November 18, 2020, protests:
In Uganda, Another Museveni Crackdown | by Helen Epstein | The New York Review of Books (nybooks.com)
More Press stories on Covid-19 related Corruption in Uganda
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/prosecute-thieves-of-covid-19-cash-report-3231244
According to the June 1, 2021, IMF press release 21/152’s FAQ section on the Staff Level Agreement on a three-year $1 billion Financing Package to Uganda:
“The Program’s transparency and governance reforms will build upon the improvements launched by the government’s new leadership code – which requires government officials to disclose their assets, incomes and liabilities, and clarifies sanctions in case of false reporting.”
The “new leadership code’ is a smokescreen. Runaway corruption in Uganda is not due to a lack of a leadership code. Uganda has had a leadership code act since 2002,
https://www.ugandalaws.com/principal-legislation/leadership-code-act
but it has had no effect on corruption because corrupt officials are intricately linked to Museveni and his kin. Museveni also fuels corruption by openly bribing members of parliament whenever he wants to pass controversial legislation such as the removal of the age limit clause from the constitution in 2017.
There is no new substantive leadership code. Museveni simply just announced a “leadership-code tribunal.” Experience shows that such announcements are merely stratagems that Museveni uses to appear to be addressing international and domestic calls for action.
https://www.mediacentre.go.ug/media/president-museveni-swears-new-leadership-code-tribunal
According to the press release’s FAQ section:
“The [Uganda] Government has already completed the audit of COVID-19 spending for FY 19/20, which is expected to be published in the coming days. Some aggregate procurement reports have already been published and individual procurement contracts will also be published in the next few days.”
https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/UGA/uganda-qandas
Question: Why did the International Monetary Fund reach an agreement with the Ugandan regime on the ECF before publication of its audit of Covid-19 spending? And why only FY 19/20? Much of the Covid-19 related fraud transpired in FY 20/21 (1 July 2020 – June 30, 2021)?
The Political and Human Rights situation in Uganda
Beyond financial and economic aspects, the dire political and human rights situation in Uganda is enough reason to hold off on approving the ECF to the Uganda regime which is considered illegitimate by most Ugandans — outside of a tiny business elite and regime beneficiaries. Aware of the population’s sentiments, General Museveni has since the election in January 2021, escalated abductions, torture, and murder of opposition party supporters in a bid to eliminate evidence of his electoral fraud — and to cower the population into not protesting it. On November 18, 2020, during the campaign period, Ugandan security forces shot dead more than 100 citizens protesting the arrest of Presidential candidate, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, though the officially acknowledged count is 54 people.
BBC documentary on the November Killings committed by Uganda Security Forces
