Editor,

Reference is made to Nathan Mugume’s article, "Selling the 'bad story' to gratify personal interests” (The New Times, June 27).

Putting private interest before the general welfare of the wider community is the normal human (and for that matter, animal) default mode. And yet putting the general interest over immediate personal gain is often the best way to maximise long-term personal gain, because it ensures a much larger collective cake to share and less loss from fractious conflict arising from having to divide very little among many.

Without President Paul Kagame to check our officials more natural propensity to serve themselves before those they lead, how long do people think it would be before we reverted to our more natural default mode of putting our private interest before the general welfare?

Remember, after all, many of the most virulent critics of the Government of Rwanda today are exiled former senior officials who were caught in various schemes to enrich themselves and their associates from public resources. That they are prepared to jump into bed with the FDLR and other heirs of the Genocide against the Tutsi legacy and their foreign sponsors and supporters tells you how far frustrated selfish impulses can push human cupidity.

Mwene Kalinda