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A dozen years after the adoption of Uganda's new constitution, the democratization process has been thrown into reverse. Uganda today is sliding backward toward a system of one-man rule engineered by the recently reelected President Yoweri Museveni, who has now been in power for more than two decades. Due to Museveni's use of force and intimindation on the one hand, and his manipulation of patronage on the other, the stakeholders whom one would naturally expect to denounce the backsliding have been silent.

Elite corruption in Uganda constitutes an essential means of consolidating the present government in power. Political leaders have therefore shown little commitment to act to curb practices that could affect their political support. Instead, anti-corruption institutions have been influenced and controlled whenever they threatened to expose the corrupt ways of Uganda's state elites. Donors have also for many years been reluctant to use their substantial economic assistance to press the government to confront wrongdoing by state elites. They have not wanted to undermine a government which they have held up as one of the most successful in Africa in carrying out donor-sponsored economic reforms. But by giving large amounts of aid to a corrupt and quasi-authoritarian government, as well as being reticent in their public criticism of abuse of power and corruption, donors have abetted the actions of Uganda's leaders in weakening those bodies that could hold them responsible for abusing their public positions.

The paper examines cases of corrupt military procurement in Uganda since the late 1990s. It also considers the illicit business activities of Ugandan army officers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 1998. The paper then discusses how military corruption aroused the concern of parliament, and became a matter of importance in the 2001 presidential elections. We argue that the prevalence of military corruption was the result of government and army leaders not being subject to public accountability. Not a single leader has been faced with prosecution or punishment for corrupt military behaviour. We conclude by arguing that military corruption has helped to maintain the National Resistance Movement (NRM) in power, although this has been realised at the cost of building a professional national army in Uganda.