More ‘Bad for Business’

 

We Ugandans are quite insular. We can ignore the Business concerns.

When our honourable Members of Parliament wanted to kill off Uganda’s homosexuals in the Uganda Homosexual Death bill, they apparently got a lot of calls in concern. Oh, we wanted our bill. From the Speaker of Parliament Anita Among's lips

“"For your information I got a lot of threats. I was intimidated. We are going to lose out drugs of AIDs, aid is going to be cut off. Tourism, trade, export [is going to be cut] I said so what?"”

Brave woman. She hung in there, and we have our bill. On the President’s Desk now.

I have a lurid suspicion that the ‘calls of intimidation’ were on the consequences of the bill. Bad for business.

Tourism?
The desire to travel has quite a number of motivations. Uganda has spent quite a lot of money promoting the country as a destination. Would the Homosexual Death bill make a dent in the tourist numbers?
I have absolutely no idea. But, I can reasonably speculate that gay tourists from other countries would hesitate to book that trip to a country that has the Homosexual Death Act  on its books. Why? Because they are subject to the laws of the country that they visit.

I wrote this post tongue-in-cheek, but would Lil Nas X dare come to the country? [get post]

Nyege Nyege…!
A very Ugandan thing, that festival. Pulls in tourists, and us fun loving ones. Would the 500 plus want to shut it down? Pretense that gay Ugandans love it? Oh, I do, I do love it!

What of the other millions of potential tourists who now know, and yes, will remember Uganda the Intolerant? They might not be kuchu, but they might know of a friend, and a friend of a friend, who is gay. Will they come spend their hard earned dollars? And pounds, and euros, and lira.
Uganda the Intolerant, Uganda of the Homosexual Death bill. We are building up quite a brand.

I can speculate that the Uganda Homosexual Death bill has been worth millions of hard currency in bad advertisement for the country.
Well, we don’t care, do we?

 “Anti-LGBT discrimination has significant economic costs, the coalition said. According toa 2019 study it conducted, Kenya loses the equivalent of up to 1.7% of its GDP annually as a result. 
What would the figure be, for poor, little Uganda?

I certainly care.
I am a Ugandan. A poor kuchu. Like most of my country mates.
Honourable Anita Among can say she doesn’t, but I do. The lady sits, with the ‘500 plus’ other honourables, at the spigot, tap of the tax collectors results. They control the tap of tax payer funds, at the gusher, the very mouth.
They actually determine their salaries and other earnings. It is in the Constitution.
Most Ugandans earn less than a million Uganda shillings a month. As an MP, the Rt Honourable Speaker earns a basic salary in tens of millions of Uganda shillings a month. That is besides the emolument as Speaker, plus others. Many MPs are literal billionaires, ahem, ahem. Uganda Shillings!
More important, they can give themselves more money, care of the tax payer. Like 50 cool millions for every member to do ‘CORVID sensitization’. Just a matter of a supplementary budget, at which quorum will not lack.

Why does it matter?
When ‘the people’ hurt economically, the 500 plus will be the last to feel any economic pain. They control the tap. Literally.

I, and most other Ugandans will hurt if the US budgetary support doesn’t come in.., almost 1 Billion USD every year. If the European Union is also constrained, [I am not sure Russia or China will close the gap as pain free as we think. Strings and strings attached.] The west does run most of our HIV, Ebola and CORVID health support, no?
Thumbing our collective noses at ‘donors’ right before we go to them with our begging bowl doesn’t sound like good policy.., from my poor kuchu point of view.

Bad for business?
Well, perhaps the assessment of economic impact the bill got was accurate. [It is a requirement for every bill.]

 

gug