By now, many Ugandans have read Dr. Daniel Kawuma’s sharply worded piece titled “After Rigged Elections, Museveni Hires Joseph Szlavik a $300,000-a-Year Washington Lobbyist to Salvage His Image.” It is passionate. It is pointed. It is also framed in a way that collapses diplomacy into scandal before the argument even begins.
Let us separate rhetoric from record.
Yes, on January 26, 2026, Scribe Strategies & Advisors registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act to represent the Government of Uganda. Yes, the contract is valued at $25,000 per month. Yes, the filing is public and accessible on the U.S. Department of Justice website. That is not a leak. It is compliance.
Dr. Kawuma presents the registration as evidence of panic and reputational collapse. But the mere existence of a FARA filing proves something far less dramatic and far more ordinary: Uganda is engaging Washington through legally recognized channels, exactly as dozens of governments do every year.
The central thesis of Dr. Kawuma’s article is that this contract is not diplomacy but “damage control.” That conclusion rests on an assumption: that any engagement with Washington during a period of criticism must be an attempt to whitewash. But diplomacy does not pause when tensions rise. In fact, it intensifies.
When congressional committees raise concerns, when European bodies issue resolutions, when bilateral relations become strained, governments do not retreat into silence. They engage more deliberately. They present their case. They defend their policies. They negotiate interests. That is not image laundering. That is statecraft.
To suggest that Uganda should avoid structured engagement in Washington because it faces criticism is to argue that only flawless governments deserve representation abroad. That is not how international relations works.
Dr. Kawuma acknowledges Uganda’s counterterrorism role but treats it as a convenient shield. Yet the threat posed by the Allied Democratic Forces is not theoretical. It has been deadly and persistent. Uganda’s military involvement in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is part of a broader regional security matrix that includes intelligence sharing and coordination with international partners.
Security cooperation and human rights debates can exist simultaneously. They are not mutually exclusive policy tracks. Washington is capable of holding two conversations at once. Reducing security engagement to a cynical bargaining chip oversimplifies a complex regional reality.
The reference to the International Court of Justice ruling on Uganda’s past involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo is important historical context. The 2022 reparations order was a significant legal development.
But invoking a judgment tied to events of the Second Congo War to frame a 2026 lobbying contract as inherently illegitimate stretches chronology into insinuation. If past rulings permanently disqualify states from diplomatic engagement, half the international system would fall silent.
International relations operates in continuity, not moral reset buttons. The $300,000 annual figure is repeatedly presented as morally offensive in a country facing economic hardship. The imagery is deliberate: clinics not stocked, classrooms not built. It is an emotionally effective comparison. It is also structurally misleading.
National budgets are not household envelopes where one line item cancels another. Governments simultaneously fund health, security, infrastructure and diplomacy. A defined, time-bound contract with review provisions is not an open-ended diversion of the treasury.
If diplomatic engagement strengthens trade access, protects export markets, or stabilizes security cooperation, the downstream economic implications can outweigh its cost. That is the logic behind such expenditures worldwide. The real question is not whether the contract exists. It is whether it produces measurable policy outcomes.
Dr. Kawuma highlights what he sees as hypocrisy: condemning Western interference while hiring a Western lobbying firm. But engagement is not submission. It is agency. Sovereignty includes the right to advocate for your interests wherever they are debated. Refusing to engage does not purify ideology. It forfeits influence.
There is a difference between opposing external imposition and participating in diplomatic dialogue. The former rejects coercion. The latter asserts presence. The article repeatedly frames the contract as a response to “rigged elections.” That is a serious claim. It is also a contested political assertion rather than a settled international legal finding.
Domestic political disputes, opposition arrests and allegations of repression are part of Uganda’s internal political landscape. They are debated vigorously within the country and scrutinized abroad. Hiring a lobbying firm does not erase those debates. Nor does it silence critics.
Lobbyists, as Dr. Kawuma correctly notes, cannot erase facts. But neither do they fabricate them out of thin air. Their function is to ensure their client’s perspective enters policy conversations. Strip away the outrage and the contract becomes something far less cinematic: a one-year, reviewable, publicly disclosed agreement for government affairs services in Washington.
Is it political? Of course. Diplomacy is political.
Is it strategic? Presumably.
Is it automatically proof of guilt, desperation or illegitimacy? That leap requires more rhetoric than evidence.
Uganda’s engagement with Scribe Strategies & Advisors does not resolve debates about governance, human rights or electoral credibility. Those conversations will continue, both domestically and internationally. But portraying lawful diplomatic engagement as scandal simply because it occurs in Washington risks confusing optics with substance.
Lobbyists can shape messaging. They cannot rewrite history. Equally, critics can shape headlines. They cannot redefine diplomacy into wrongdoing by assertion alone.
In the end, the seriousness of Uganda’s political challenges deserves serious analysis. Not every contract is a confession. And not every act of engagement is an admission of collapse.