Six years in the USA and I still had trouble converting gallons into litres so that I could understand the real impact of rising gas prices on my purse. The figure just seemed to be creeping up slowly each summer but the significance of the change in fuel prices finally hit home last Friday. I rolled up to the pump and watched in horror as the price sped past faster and faster, higher and higher, settling at $53.26 to fill up my Jeep, Ouch!
A few months ago I could have bought a
one-way ticket from Florida to Washington on sale for that amount of money!
Democrats were making a big deal of gas prices with voters about to cast their ballots in Indiana and North Carolina to determine the party’s presidential candidate. It seemed like a mundane subject to me in an otherwise feisty campaign, then I got hit with the gas bill and started paying closer attention.

I had disengaged from the process to brace myself for the unthinkable yet probable defeat of Barack Obama. If he does lose the nomination, he ought to write another bestseller titled ‘How to Lose an Election: A must read for all popular politicians.’
This past weekend Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were squabbling over who had the better plan to manage the inevitable hike of pump prices when demand for automobile fuel soars this coming summer.

Senator Clinton’s campaign has dug in deep and kept a firm hold on the less literate, blue collar white folks using a populist approach that reminds one of Museveni and ‘his’ peasants. She offers instant fixes not different from our own Bonna bagagawale scheme and sure enough the ‘peasants’ love it, and they voted for her in large numbers in Pennsylvania to prove it. By the time you read this, many more would have voted for her in Indiana.

Her plan on gas prices is very easy to understand and straight forward: She wants a “holiday” on fuel taxes for the summer peak driving season. A very simple means of putting cash in the pockets of ‘peasants.’ And here is how she promotes her plan: “I’m the only candidate who will provide immediate relief at the pump, with a plan to make it happen, turning talk into action.”

Obama on the other hand opposes a tax holiday and says Hillary’s plan is just a gimmick which would have no long-term impact on the cost of driving, and might even drive up gas prices in the long run.
“If we’re going to deal seriously with gas prices, we’re not going to pretend to do something by offering a tax holiday that would at best provide 30 cents a day for three months for a grand total of $28,” Obama said on CNN.

“It’s more likely to reward oil companies further because they’ll just jack up their prices.”
Okay, so Obama has a point and his view is supported by business minds as large as Warren Buffet’s, as well as tree-hugging environmentalists. But guess which message will appeal to the ‘peasants?’
And so I return to home turf where our own economic guru and President Museveni, is celebrating soaring food prices as a blessing for ‘his’ peasant farmers.

Defying conventional economic logic and traditional wisdom, he who educated us on the merits of barter trade is now teaching his new model on the impact of rising food prices on the pocket of the peasant from a populist political angle!

Moreover, his views come at a time when world leaders and academicians are seriously discussing and seeking solutions to an international crisis that has caused food riots in Egypt, Indonesia, Cameroon, Peru and Haiti as a result of an explosion in food prices.

So how are other leaders around the world approaching the food crisis?
According to Homi Kharas, Senior Fellow at the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution; “…a number of food importing countries have started to lower their import tariffs, to try to offset the impact of high international prices on their domestic consumers. And then on the other side, a number of food exporting countries are trying to make sure that more of their food stays at home and keeps prices low, [using] export taxes to stop their farm exporters from selling abroad, and keep them selling domestically.”

Obviously, Kharas has not spoken to our Yoweri Museveni.

The author is a Special Envoy, Office of the President, FDC. anne@fdcuganda.org