No cheap PR can save Kiggundu’s EC; reform can
5th–11th July 2010
By Charles Ochen Okwir
The author
Scanning through Uganda’s newspapers last week, I bumped onto one particular article that I thought needs revisiting. In his opinion article [Why should the opposition discredit Badru Kiggundu] that appeared in the government owned Newvision newspaper of June 29th, Mr. Awel Uwihanganye who signed off as a “Public Relations and Communications Consultant”, appears to have taken it upon himself to repair EC Chairman Badru Kiggundu’s beleaguered image. Of course, as PR consultant, we must all assume that Uwihanganye was merely doing a job for which he had [probably] been paid handsomely. Anyone who knows a thing or two about PR will appreciate that Mr. Uwihanganye indeed made a pretty good attempt. And the reason I say that is this: To the millions upon millions of untrained Ugandan hearts, minds and eyes, Mr. Uwihanganye may have succeeded in shifting attention away from the incompetent and totally discredited Electoral Commission that Kiggundu presides over to “Kiggundu the private man”.
And to do that, he tried to rally public sympathy by shifting the publics’ focus to Kiggundu’s integrity as a man and said: “I had the privilege to meet Kiggundu and our meeting left a lasting impression on me. It is this that forms the basis of my defence of his character, as a man of integrity, a key requirement for one to serve as Chairman of the EC”. Nice try; but not good enough!
Yes, it is classic PR theory and or trick that you will find in even the most elementary PR books. Namely, that if you win the public’s affection and sympathy for a beleaguered client like Kiggundu for example, then that sympathy could slowly rub off onto the organisation [in this case Uganda’s incompetent EC] that the client presides over. That way, he hoped, the public would then view Kiggundu as “a decent man and one of the few patriotic public servants” who is going about his job in good faith. The effect of that would then be for the public to, at the bare minimum, give the EC as an organisation the benefit of the doubt and perhaps allow it one more shot at organising Uganda’s next general elections.
No one should be fooled by Mr. Uwihanganye’s PR offensive in of defence Kiggundu. No one, absolutely no one in Uganda’s recent history has received as much public disapproval as Kiggundu has. That disapproval stems directly from Kiggundu’s [personal] pathetic, partisan, and inept stewardship of the EC that leads. So there is absolutely no way you can divorce Kiggundu’s personal integrity from the shambolic manner in which the EC is run; including of course, its record of twice acting outside that the law as the Supreme Court confirmed in both the 2001 and 2006 elections petitions filed by Dr. Kizza Besigye.
Secondly, as I said, no one in Uganda’s recent history has received as much public disapproval as Kiggundu. If Kiggundu was indeed a man of integrity as Mr. Uwihanganye would have us believe, he would have resigned long time ago. That is what decent men and women of integrity do. They take responsibility for serious failures in the organisations they preside over by resigning as a matter of principle. Kiggundu is most definitely not a man of integrity. Would a man of integrity have insisted on remaining in his job when police are beating, and stripping the IPC women naked [in Kiggundu’s defence] outside Kiggundu’s own office? Would Kiggundu, for example, have insisted on hanging on to his job if one of the women who were being beaten and stripped naked by police outside his office was his mother, wife or daughter? I doubt it.
PR is not about defending the indefensible at all costs. That is a very poor strategy and I am pretty sure the government’s own favourite PR agency Hill & Knowlton will tell them that much. Hill & Knowlton, a London based PR Firm, is known for its work with some of the most repressive regimes on this planet; and that alone speaks volumes about the NRM government’s association with it. And believe or not, one of the best PR strategies that they often recommend to their despotic clients is “reform”. I know for a fact that they succeeded in getting one of their rogue state clients to agree to holding elections for the very first time.
That is the reform I am talking about. From having no elections at all, to having elections; however imperfect they may be. It is a good start and it is a more powerful PR strategy than Uwihanganye’s attempts to merely shift attention away from the EC and focus it the Kiggundu’s that he says is “warm, and lacked the ‘big man’ aura that surrounds most of our public officials”.
With respect, that is quite simply absolute nonsense. If he is indeed determined to repair Kiggundu’s battered image, then he should strongly advice the Museveni-Kiggundu EC to accept the reforms proposed by the Inter-Party Cooperation [IPC]. If the EC is viewed by the public as a credible, competent, and trustworthy organisation, then that goodwill will rub off onto Kiggundu the man; not the other way round.
Today, a certain Dr. William Muhairwe is riding sky high in the public eye because of the crucial reforms he introduced to National Water & Sewerage Corporation [NWSC] which turned NWSC into one of the most respectable organisations in Uganda today. If that doesn’t serve as a great example for Kiggundu, then nothing ever will.
Charles Okwir is a London based Lawyer and Journalist
