The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential defines governance by deception as deliberate lying by government that occurs via the following means:

• Government duplicity
• Deliberate lying by government officials
• Misrepresentation of facts by national leaders
• Deliberate distortion of official news and information
• Official over-reporting and under-reporting
• Diplomatic lying
• Perjury by government agents
• Susceptibility of electorate to government repetition of untruths
• Intellectual dishonesty in government
• Government insincerity
• Contradictions in official statements

All these are frequently summarised as corruption. Any country with a government, which ticks by deceptions is thus prone to corruption. Corruption will be at the centre of everything small and big at all levels of society. According to The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential, governmental lying is a continuous phenomenon. Accordingly, corruption will also be contagious.

When you read The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential, you lean that deception by government may be categorised as” broader”, “narrower” and “aggravated”.

To the “broader” belongs to outright deception, domination, institutional lying, political deception and unethical practices of government.

To the “narrower” belongs electoral fraud, beneficial lying, official self-deception, deceptive misuse of research, biased government information, concealed government subsidies, unreported government spending, misreporting of military action, military-industrial malpractices, defence information uncertainty, sanitisation of government information. Government manipulation of public information, government misrepresentation of human rights abuses and misleading of elected representatives by government officials. Related to all these are the unethical practices in the public sector.

To the “Aggravated” belong disinformation, misrepresentation, ineffective diplomacy, government propaganda, deception in the media, terminological deception, suspicion of imposed change, historical misrepresentation, ineffectual government bluster, official fabrication of evidence, blackmail by government officials, improper collusion among officials, deceptive presentation of prosperity and loss of confidence in government officials.

According to The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential, all the different indices of deception are aggravated by a number of factors, including: the government treasury, authoritarianism of the regime in power, government incompetence, avoidance of negative feedback, mediocrity of government leaders, vulnerability of society to the truth, misconduct in elective office, endorsement of false government claims, unethical practices in government and exploitation of the confusion between public and government interest.

After reading The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential, I consulted a senior political scientist I used to interact with at Makerere University in the 1990s. He told me that deception of whatever kind and by whatever means is the reason why President Tibuhaburwa Museveni has been able to manipulate the sociopolitical space and the National Budget for his personal political gain. He asked me to go beyond what The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential states to explain why leadership, governance and the State of Uganda have virtually failed.

My critical thinking skills broadened. Right from the beginning of my thought process on governance by deception in Uganda, I made a pre-decision that everything in Uganda today is deception, by deception, for deception.

From my previous writings I made it clear that what was liberation of Uganda and Ugandans by the National Resistance Movement/National Resistance Army (NRM/NRA) was far from the truth. It was deception. The liberation was for refugees who had either lived in Uganda for a long time or would live in Uganda after the “liberators” had captured the instruments of power. The power has been used to capture everything conceivable: the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary.

Besides, the captured power was used to capture the sociopolitical space at the exclusion of Ugandans for the benefit people of exogenous origins. These days such people include the Indians and the Chinese.

One would not be far-fetched if one states that the future of Uganda and Ugandans was captured by the supposed liberation and that, therefore, another liberation would be necessary to ensure that not only is the destiny of all Ugandans is in the hands of Ugandans themselves but that the futurity of the country is determined by the totality of Ugandan.

Accordingly, the captured Ugandans are not making their own laws and policies. Nor are their public services in their own hands, which may explain why they are meteorically declining in quantity and quality despite so much money being allocated to their development, transformation and progress.

Everything is deception. The sale of public assets by the NRM/A was deception. It was stated the aim was to enhance efficiency but instead they ended up in the hands of government functionaries and their fronts, usually Indians. When it was said simultaneously retrenchment of government workers would create a small but efficient workforce, this was followed by swelling of the workforce with young people, who were closely linked to those in power by kinship and ethnically. Almost every institution of the government is dominated people who are closely related. No doubt the quality of productivity of the institutions leave a lot to be desired

Things like Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) are islands of deception: poor quality, poorly funded, and opportunistically tied to the political interest of the rulers to continually dominate the poorly educated population. This is already happening by exporting the youth who cannot be employed domestically to foreign labour markets in the Arab world.

If you seriously think about the submission in The Encyclopaedia of World Problems and Human Potential, you will agree that when what it states is applied to Uganda, sovereignty, independence, self-determination, development, transformation and progress are things of the past, thanks to exacerbated deception. You will be compelled to rethink the seriousness and value of government decision to invest money in individuals rather than the communities of Ugandans. You will start taking ideas such as Bonna Bagaggawale, Operation Wealth Creation, Emyooga and Parish Development Model as nothing but tools of deception, based as they are on the discredited trickle-down model of development with the falsehood that when you invest in individual and they experience personal prosperity then some of this will be experienced by others in the community or country.

It sad, but true. Ideas like elections, privatisation, decentralisation and cities are NRM’s deceptive inventions of the late 1990s and early new millennium. They have benefited only a small group of people at the expense of the majority of Ugandans and the country.

Equity, justice and fairness have instead been eroded for political gain of a small group of people serviced by people who may not be adequately knowledgeable about what is going on. The ten-million-dollar question is: does the government have to deceive people or country in order to govern?

For God and My Country.