While at the dissemination meeting of two study reports on women’s leadership, last week, the renowned critique of the Museveni government, had a faceoff with the UWONET (Uganda Women’s Network) lead consultant Ms. Cecilia and Ms. Rita H. Aciro Lakor, the executive director of UWONET on the research finding that the NRM government has done nothing in fighting corruption.
The meeting that was attended by over 150 women leaders at Hotel Africana in Kampala, was reviewing the performance of political parties in the implementation of the women manifesto between 2016-2018.
In an unusual tone of criticism to the researchers, Dr Maria Matembe cautioned women leaders not to sit in their offices and copy and paste reports for purposes of accountability but should be true to their word, and have a fair assessment.
She asked that if the NRM had done nothing about corruption at all, then how about the office of the IGG, anti-corruption court, and several other constitutions set up to curb the vice? She also called the attention of the participants to the legal framework in place.
This, however, did not go well with the consultant and organizers, who were very disappointed to hear any dissenting voice in favor of the NRM government, moreover from Miria Matembe.
The report among others indicated glaring gaps especially in the FDC manifesto, and FDC’s lack of any policy alternatives as a majority opposition party.
While the report equally accused the DP party replicating verbatim the women manifesto as designed by the women activists in 2015, and doing nothing about it.
NRM was credited for infrastructure development in the education and health sector but called upon to improve on reporting and record-keeping for easy information access by researchers.