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By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
Conscience is the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one’s own conduct, intentions or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary sees conscience as the part of your mind that tells you whether your actions are right or wrong. Many times, leaders who think they are next to God tend not to be conscience-stricken (i.e., they do not feel guilty about what the have done, intend to do or failed to do).
They make impossible promises, which they can never fulfill, or make choices against the people, and the only way they see out of the quagmire is to buy the consciences of voters or of key people of influence with money or jobs to get what they want.
This is what I am calling “Exchanging Conscience for Money”. The phrase “Exchanging Conscience for Money”, as used in this article, describes a situation where someone priotises financial or political gain over his or her moral compass, potentially engaging in unethical, immoral and harmful acts. In a way, both the buyer of conscience and seller of conscience are guilty in engaging conscience in buying and selling for political or financial gain or both.
There are cases when the seller of conscience negotiates her or his take form the buyer or when the buyer individually decides how much to pay for the conscience he or she buys. Also, there are cases when the clergy directly ask for vehicles from the buyer of their conscience. We can thus talk of trading conscience.
In this article I assume that money can buy the conscience of a morally weak individual and harm a country through de-democratisation for personal gain and end up “killing” institutions.
I am assuming that the Members of Parliament and Clergy have frequently had their consciences bought by the President using money. However, medium of exchange might be cars, jobs or supporting the construction of churches and mosques for political gain; but money is the familiar energy of exchange between the MPs and Clergy.
Therefore, to pursue my critical analysis, I link the institution of President, which is constitutionally baptized “Fountain of Honor” and the political buying of the conscience of the Members of Parliament and Clergy of Uganda in one spectrum of de-democratizing Uganda.
However, it should be mentioned that the President of Uganda has consistently and persistently used public money to buy the conscience of people across all social strata, including youth, women and men for political gain and at the expense of institutional growth, development, stability and integrity.
We saw how he carried a sack of money for youth in Kaliro. We have also seen how money has been distributed for youth in the ghetto of Kampala. It is claimed that during the recent by-election in North Kawempe, the President released close to 4 billion Shillings intended to buy the conscience of voters in favor of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Candidate. However, it is possible that most of the money was snatched by NRM heavy weights who were active in the by-election.
Perhaps it is better to distinguish between democratization and de-democratization before I go deeper in the subject matter of my article.
Democratization
Democratization can be seen as many things in one: free and fair elections, participation in decision-making, guaranteeing education, health, human rights, freedoms, justice, and access of people, groups of people and communities to resources, power and authority of all the citizens without discrimination or inequality.
In Uganda democratization is militarily-guided and controlled in favor of the quasi-military National Resistance Movement (NRM) government. In the process the militarily-guided and controlled democratization has enhanced inequalities and injustices along numerous dimensions in the sense that leadership and governance have become apartheid-like. This is detectable in agriculture, fisheries and the total economy. Many Ugandans have ended up being excluded from the economy.
De-democratization
De-democratization is the direct opposite democratization. Sometimes, the opposite of democratization is given as democratic backsliding or autocratization. In Uganda de-democratization is like a project that is highly valued by the powers that be. The greatest indication of the project in process is the buying of the conscience of voters, the Members of Parliament and the spiritual leaders.
Two principal tools of buying the conscience of voters, Members of Parliament and spiritual leaders are money donations and vehicle donations. These tools are playing a significant role in the de-democratization Uganda. Instead of representing and speaking out for the public interest, the Members of Parliament and the Clergy work in the interest of the Executive. Or else they choose conspiracy of silence.
The consequence of all this is that the citizenry is losing interest in the militarily-driven and controlled democratization process, including elections, and in the country as well. The Chairman of the Uganda Electoral Commission, Justice Byabakama, has called for a law to compel Ugandans to vote. It is possible unaware of the ethics, morality and psychology of the elections he conducts. We need studies to help the Chairman understand what is going on.
Freeman (2017) sees de-democratization as a major process that has taken place since the 1970s, and which has increased the political representation of capital while reducing that of labor. The dynamics of de-democratization are fundamentally global, and play out in very many states in very similar ways.
Therefore, solutions surely cannot be found at the national level alone but must also be sought at the global level (Freeman, 2017). Globalization is very much at the center of de-democratization.
Therefore, by becoming the first government in Africa to embrace globalization, the national Resistance Movement (NRM in Uganda was inviting de-democratization as well. Matthijs Bogaards (2024) does not think that de-democratization necessarily means democratization backwards.
He wonders whether what we know about democratization can be used to explain de-democratization. He also seeks to explain the difference between de-democratization and autocratisation.
I have stated above that buying the conscience of voters, MPs and Clergy in Uganda is going on.. Clergy refers to the formal leaders and officials within established religions. Members of Parliament are elected representatives of the people.
When the conscience of the MPs and Clergy is bought by power, they no longer have the moral authority to represent the people in Parliament or guide the people in spiritual growth and development. However, in Uganda, MPs have been successively used to endorse the choices of the President, such as removal of presidential term limits and age limits and transferring the coffee industry to a foreigner, by being given money, often clandestinely, but all the same the public comes to know about it.
For example, recently the President was evoked in the public space for having given 100 million shillings to each of the NRM MPs and some Opposition MPs because they supported his transfer of the Coffee industry to a foreigner and wanted them to support his wish to try civilians in military courts.
For the Clergy, top leaders are given vehicles once they rise to the leadership positions. One school of thought says that they are given presidential money donations to construct their churches and mosques. Unfortunately, once MPs and Clergy receive presidential money or cars, they distance themselves from representing the public interest.
They do not even stand up for what is right or challenge what is wrong on the part of the President. Worse still, when voters or ordinary people hear and see that their MPs and Clergy are selling their conscience, they too sell theirs, frequently at peanuts.
It is disrespectful for MPs and Clergy to sell their conscience to the Fountain of Honor. Apart from devaluing themselves, they actually end up de-valuing the Office of President when they trade their conscience for money. They also destroy our young generation that may grow up thinking, believing and convinced that selling conscience is normal and integral to societal behavior.
It is of course also disrespectful for politicians to bring money to voters to influence them (the voters) to vote for them (e.g., Nana Konadu Agyeman and Timothy Ngnenbe, 2024).
Selling your conscience because of a bribe lowers your worth and turns you into a slave, however high you are in society. Even the giver of the bribe for someone else’s conscience ends up devaluing himself/herself and the institution he or she heads.
It is a sad scenario where a leader is willing to compromise his or her values and integrity for financial gain, or to compromise the consciences of other leaders for both political and financial gain. Yet this is what is happening in Uganda.
We must revive both the conscience and consciousness of the nation by both rejecting and resisting the Presidential strategy of buying the conscience of voters and political and spiritual leaders for both political and financial gain.
This way we shall also collectively restore the value and integrity of our Presidency; the Fountain of Honor. The scarce financial resources must be invested in the social, economic and infrastructural development of Uganda, and in fighting environmental decay and collapse. at a time when inflows of money in form of loans and charity have reduced tremendously.
Otherwise, buying and selling the conscience of voters and of political leaders and clergy will become the greatest threat to democratization and the pivot for de-democratization in Uganda this century.
For God and My Country
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