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Ear to The Ground
By Charles Onyango-Obbo |
What's the difference between Ssempebwa Reports I, II, III, IV?
Feb 18, 2004
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If published, it will become evident that the chairman and Owor weren't party to it Interesting. Chris Mullin, Britain's Secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, is reported to have told Parliament that his government is encouraging Kampala to publish the report of the Constitutional Review Commission (CRC) that was headed by Prof. Fred Ssempebwa (See: British MPs Table Motion On 3rd Term, Sunday Monitor, February 15). The MPs, taking the view that Britain is after all the leading bilateral donor to Uganda, tabled a motion criticising the move by the Museveni Government to have a presidency for life by scrapping presidential term limits; and seeking to pressurise London into nudging Kampala to end de facto one party rule. Many of Uganda's "development partners" have in the past made criticisms of one form or the other of the one-party/Movement system, and lately the third/fifth term moves. So they sound dull and pedestrian in asking that the Ssempebwa Report be published. However, the question of the Ssempebwa Report is quite explosive, and has only a small part to do with what is in the report. When the report leaked and The Monitor published a story revealing its contents, the government moved quickly to obtain a court injunction to prevent the paper from publishing any further material from it. The document that was eventually released as the official report of the CRC was different from the original in several respects. Significant among them was that while the leaked report largely quashed the idea of a third term, the second edition recommended that it should be decided by a referendum. Informed sources now alleged that after the court injunction, CRC commissioners came under pressure from powerful politicians, setting off a series of events that could soon come to haunt the review process. It is claimed some CRC commissioners "collapsed" under pressure, and accepted to recommend a referendum and open the way for the lifting of the term limits. The problem, however, is that the recommendation for a referendum did not come from the petitions the CRC received, and public hearings it held. That was because the mandate of the CRC was limited to collecting the views of Ugandans on what aspects of the Constitution they wanted to be reviewed. Therefore, the only way the recommendation for a referendum could be brought forward was as the opinion of the commissioners. The commissioners became divided over that. Political operatives now worked to get a majority of the commissioners to form a favourable opinion, because it was the only way it could find its way into the report. In the end, according to the sources, we ended up - if you count the injunctioned version - with four reports. Unusually for a commission of this nature, Ssempebwa wrote a minority report. Another commissioner also wrote a minority report. Information suggests that Mr Sam Owor wrote this second minority report. One therefore needs to be mindful of this when they speak of the "Ssempebwa Report". Sources say the Ssempebwa Report is against both the referendum, and the third term. The Sam Owor report is thought to take a position somewhere between Ssempebwa and "CRC Majority" report, for that is how it can best be described. Something went terribly wrong creating this unprecedented situation, for no one can remember a time in Uganda's history when a chairman did not subscribe to the report of the commission he headed. Understandably, this has put the government in a quandary. If it publishes the However, even if it were courageous enough, it could not publish only the Majority CRC Report. The sum total of the CRC report would have to include Ssempebwa's and Owor's separate submissions. This was the same problem that plagued the Odoki Constitutional Commission between 1990-1994, when a group of "Wise Men" among the commissioners allegedly used to sneak to secret meetings at State House, and eventually introduced "Satanic verses" in the draft constitution. The powers that be were so incensed when Mr Sam Njuba, who was then minister in charge of the constitution-making process revealed this; he was promptly sacked. Why does the Movement get itself in this mess all the time? Clearly, the government wants to clothe a lot of controversial political decisions in democratic robes. Usually it appoints respectable and well-regarded Ugandans to chair commissions, and hopes that subtle persuasion will persuade them to do the government's fishy work for it. This does not always work. In fact, in the case of the Constitutional Commission, despite the mysterious murder of Prof. Dan Mudoola, their draft was not as subservient as the government wanted, leaving it to a partisan majority in the Constituent Assembly to crudely bulldoze the provisions that outlawed free multiparty politics, and quashed the clamour for federalism. That is one reason agitation for "multipartyism" and federo never died down. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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