“The 9th State of the Nation Platform meeting held on June 4, 2010 debated the “ Role of Religious Leaders in Promoting and Sustaining Democracy and Good Governance in Uganda: Towards the 2011 Elections and Beyond.” Bishop Zac Niringiye, the assistant Bishop of the Church of Uganda’s Diocese of Kampala and the chairman of the National Governing Council of the African Peer Review Mechanism was the main speaker. The meeting was well attended by religious leaders from other denominations and officials from Inter-religious Council of Uganda. There was near unanimity at the end of the debate that things are not going well in Uganda. A new beginning with a new cadre of leaders with vision, conviction, and courage in Uganda needs to kick the country to a higher level, not new laws and institutions because country has Bishop Zac Niringiye framed his submission in terms of the politics of patronage. “Our governance challenge is political,” he said. “We have a long history of the entrenched politics of patronage.” It is no longer God and Country first, the bishop said in reference to Uganda’s national motto: For God and My Country. The motto that works, he said, is: For Me and My Group First. Whether it is creation of districts or behaviour of churches. “We seem not to have leaders who are capable of going beyond this mindset,” the bishop said.”
