When political interests surpass common good, the citizens suffer at the hands of criminals.
A story of one Musa Musinguzi, a serial killer has been making rounds in the mainstream Media in Uganda.
Musa Musasizi, alias, Uncle, 23, a resident of Mujomba Zone 6, Nakulabye in Rubaga Division, Kampala City, allegedly had sexual intercourse with four women before he strangled them, burnt their bodies and later dumped them in isolated areas.
The gravity of such a case is alarming but first let me applaud the joint security forces that are doing a great task of bringing such criminals to book.
The efforts of Security forces however are being rebuked by political interest groups who pause as experts on every subject. For the last one month, the National Unity platform with its lawyers and leadership exerted pressure on the State over some arrests that they called “abductions.”
The question is, when did political parties take on the work of Security Forces?
What is sad is the wisdom divide that exists among political practitioners and self-seeking lawyers who mislead the President on some of these issues. This has done more harm to communities. This has put Government on pressure to release some people who are potential threats to communities before thorough investigations are fully made.
Whenever security programs come up, Opposition and self-seeking politicians and opportunistic lawyers take the mantle to antagonize the processes.
This happened with the Disarmament Program in Karamoja, where the government was reducing guns and saving Karamoja from Cattle rustling.
The other operation was the ‘’Wembly” which was meant to flush out illegal guns in the country. All these were highly opposed by self-seeking politicians and lawyers. What is even sad is that Our Media takes the bait and reports very unbalanced stories as though they are aggrieved. The ethics of objectivity are all thrown away.
The Media instead of carrying out parallel investigations into the issues are wooed into covering the Press conferences which are organized with an agenda to bring the regime down. What does this cause? Poor framing of the Ugandan Image, the foreign Media picks on from the local content by our national media houses and portrays our country as though it were about to collapse.
Before I lose you, I am sacred for Uganda when criminals are released back to society because a political player made unnecessary noise.
Let me pick you up. The National Unity Platform picked up the case of the people that were being arrested and took advantage of it to keep a post-election relevance. At the heart of the matter, some of the people that were arrested were picked up because the communities had outcries of insecurity. Investigations had to be made.
Take a case of Musa Musinguzi who was raping and killing his victims. Before landing on him several people had to be arrested in connection to a tracked phone that belonged to one of Musa’s victims. How simple could it have been without arresting them? How was Police going to get to this serial killer without arresting a few innocent people in line of investigations?
The recently 60 people that were released know very well that they were in line of crime. Some were arrested because a red flag was raised on them by LCs, their families and neighbors for having suspicious and ambiguous behaviors.
When limelight seeking people pay a token to some of the people that were released to parade them in the media for their interests, they ought to be aware that it’s dangerous for them but good for communities because we as the public now can see the people that have been terrorizing us.
It is no wonder that none of them has decided to sue the Government, they well know that the evidence held by the State on them is overwhelming. Those that were innocent know that they were in line of crime and investigations had to be made.
We had headlines line like “Bobi Wine issues list of 247 Missing people” running in the media. How did he come up with the list? Does he have an independent investigation firm or is he playing cards of relevance. I will leave that to the Media.The mistake by NUP to play cheap popularity politics and claim that every arrested person was their supporter, is a clear indication that a hidden agenda to overthrow the Government by having all criminals on their side may work only for a short time.
The same criminals will overthrow NUP before NUP can over throw the Government and we shall wait to see how the gullible Media will wish to correct their earlier reports and as the public, we shall have lost trust in it. We need an environment where the Government and the Media, Politicians and the Public are working together, not fighting each other.
We need transformative potential from each of the players so that we see growth instead of making the common person a playground for the elephants.
The Media has the challenge to be more objective and less skewed to sensational reporting.
