By Aggrey Baba
Operation Wealth Creation coordinator and President Museveni’s younger brother, Gen Salim Saleh, who has for long established himself as a peacemaker in his brother’s government, now, wants government to move beyond political reconciliation promises and commit public funds to addressing historical and contemporary injustices, warning that Uganda’s proposed national settlement cannot succeed if commitments to inclusion and reconciliation are not backed by actual government spending.
In a proposed Consociational Democracy Agreement co-authored with his personal aide, Professor Ogenga Otunnu, Gen Saleh recommends that government establish dedicated budget lines across different sectors to address historical grievances, regional disparities, economic exclusion and the marginalization of particular communities.
The recommendation forms part of a wider five-year national programme envisaged to run from 2026 to 2031, seeking to address the structural causes of Uganda’s political and social divisions through sustained dialogue, institutional reforms, inclusive governance and targeted development interventions.
The broader initiative seeks to move Uganda beyond the traditional winner-takes-all approach to politics by creating a structured framework through which government, political parties and other sections of society can cooperate in addressing national challenges without necessarily abandoning their political differences.
A central concern in the proposal is that previous attempts at political cooperation have largely concentrated on agreements among political leaders without sufficiently addressing the economic, social and historical grievances affecting the ordinary people.
The proposed arrangement seeks to connect national political negotiations with communities, ensuring that concerns raised at grassroots level inform government policies, development priorities and resource allocation.
It is against this background that the General wants government to establish dedicated budget lines for interventions targeting historical and contemporary grievances.
The proposal seeks to move the reconciliation debate beyond who gets political representation and access to government to whether communities that have experienced exclusion will actually receive the public investment, services and economic opportunities required to address their grievances.
Gen Saleh argues that government must systematically integrate the proposed agreement into national policies, institutional frameworks, budgets and development programmes, working alongside Parliament, political parties, religious institutions, development partners and Non-governmental Organizations.
He also wants government to publicly disclose all policies, programmes and projects specifically designed to tackle the root causes of sectarianism, historical injustices and exclusion.
Such disclosure would allow citizens to establish which interventions government has committed to undertake, the communities they are targeting, the resources allocated and whether the programmes are producing the intended results.
The proposed framework also envisages a National Consociational Council to coordinate cooperation between political leaders and wider sections of society.
Its proposed structures include an Elite Cooperation Chamber bringing together government and political parties, a Grassroots and Multi-Stakeholder Chamber incorporating religious and cultural institutions, civil society, women and youth, and a technical implementation structure responsible for translating agreed commitments into programmes, budgets and measurable targets.
He further proposes the establishment of a national and cross-party Joint Implementation Committee with a clearly defined mandate, timeline and resources to coordinate the implementation process.
These structures are intended to ensure that the proposed settlement does not remain an agreement among political elites/parties but becomes a national programme whose implementation can be followed from government institutions down to districts and communities.
The paper identifies land grievances, regional economic disparities, youth alienation and unemployment, poor public service delivery, corruption and unequal access to opportunities among the structural problems requiring substantive attention.
The proposed approach, according to Saleh, calls for institutional and structural reforms that bring together interventions addressing both past and present injustices, exclusion and marginalization.
A key question arising from the proposal is how government will demonstrate that resources allocated to address historical grievances are actually reaching the communities for whom the interventions are intended.
By demanding dedicated budget lines and public disclosure of targeted programmes, Gen Saleh is proposing a system in which the implementation of national reconciliation can be examined through government expenditure, development priorities and measurable outcomes.
The paper also cautions against political cooperation arrangements that only benefit political bigwigs while leaving ordinary people outside the benefits of negotiated settlements.
Under the proposed framework, inclusion would therefore need to be reflected not only in political agreements but also in the distribution of public resources, social services and economic opportunities.
The underlying argument is that political cooperation alone cannot resolve Uganda’s far-fetched divisions. Government must identify the grievances requiring redress, allocate resources to address them and remain accountable for the results.
Ultimately, the proposal seeks to turn national reconciliation from a political declaration into a sustained government programme, with identifiable beneficiaries, dedicated resources and measurable improvements in the lives of the people of Uganda. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
