Mr. Michael Gaffney:

In the coming months we will have a job of work to do. The Secretary General has written to all of the ambassadors and we have received the first report indicating that the Secretary General is going to have a regional meeting in Africa in February at which we will discuss this issue for a number of days. During the next 12 months we will carry out a systematic examination of all our systems to learn about what has occurred in Uganda and how we can incorporate that learning. Some of the systems are technical, but others are political. It is about having our radar open to know what is happening on the ground. When I look back on what happened in Uganda during the past 12 months I can see there was a trajectory in regard to corruption. Uganda has a very open press which can be slanderous at times. Everything gets into it. If one looks back at what happened in the past year, perhaps we should have detected that the trajectory was moving in the wrong direction. The lesson to be learned is that we need people on the ground - local people and our own - with our radar open to determine what is happening politically. We also need technical people to be alert to what is happening in the public financial management system. We introduced a new system two years ago, whereby every two years we look at each country and make our own recommendations and determinations on the strength of its systems. Up until then we were using the World Bank public financial assessment systems, but we have introduced our own system to complement them. I hope that in the next year or so we will subject all these systems to a test and there will not be leaks. I hope also that within 12 months Uganda will be in a much better position in expanding the programme.