By Prof. Waswa Balunywa
In the last two months, there have been three stupid articles in the newspapers. I call them stupid because that is what they are. One had my name though was talking about someone else, two have had my pictures appearing. Two of the articles were in the Sun and one was in the Hello.
Over the years, I have learnt that if you are anybody in society, you’re prone to scrutiny by the public. I thank God the newspapers have found me somebody. What I have also found is that if you can sell a newspaper for the owner they will keep on writing silly things to draw attention of the public. At times, the public buys the trash that has been written and believes it. At times they dismiss it saying we know those people. What else would they write other than nonsense.
It is important that if you are in the public eye you should be accountable for your actions. You cannot be 100% perfect. These people in the media should respect society and stop feeding it with trash or even when you make mistakes, these mistakes should be assessed based on whether they are deliberate or not.
Society has a responsibility to revolve leaders and respect them even when these leaders make mistakes, we should be able to assess the benefits they have created to society and have good judgment about the challenges they face. This is what a responsible press would do. Unfortunately, corruption has created problems. People are given money to write ill against others.
There is no explanation for an article that reads “MUBS Balunywa is sex for money” scandal and the person they are talking about is not Balunywa but maybe related to Balunywa. I have just been informed that they will write about you if they suspect your appointing authority has good things for you. When they write the bad things, he changes his mind. I hope he has some good things for me. Fortunately, he has a mechanism to verify this nonsense that appears in the press. The other reason is they want to discredit you and make people dislike you.
I think in my case, this is possible if you are talking to people I have not worked with or related too. They do not believe this trash. But if you show this to those I have never interacted with chances are they may believe. I will be referring this case to the Media council, the Uganda Journalist association and my lawyers to advise me on my rights. I am fed up with this nonsense that demeans us among our peers, family members and right thinking members of society.
For your information, the story in Hello is a lie. The truth is the PPDA in one of its annual reports cautioned us about not planning our procurements properly. This multi-billion scam talked about the figment of the imagination of the authors.
