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MANIPULATION: Oloka |
OPINION
Ofwono Opondo
DR Joe Oloka Onyango of Makerere University Law School and other political critics have invested a lot of energy in the media trying to spread half ideological, political and even legal truths about the current democratisation debate.
Their pre-occupation is to portray the Movement leadership as obstructionist or manipulators of constitutional procedures merely to secure crude, corrupt and absolute power retention for President Yoweri Museveni.
Every lawyer is now a constitutional expert.
But American author Henry David Thoreauâs warned in 1849, âThe lawyerâs truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.â And in Men of Good Hope, 1951, author Daniel Aaron quoted American religious leader Theodore Parker warning, âIf powerful men will not write justice with black ink on white paper, ignorant and violent men will write it on the soil in letters of blood and illuminate their rude legislation with burning castles, palaces and towns.â
At the heart of all these antics, is a class struggle by the elite representing minority interests against the popular aspirations of the peasantry, rural communities, and disadvantaged groups.
Previously, despotic elite used force to control society, but as they lose this weapon, they are devising measures to prevent âignorantâ masses from interfering with public affairs.
According to Onyango and his group, it is the masses that have no business to express themselves on constitutional matters in a referendum since there is an elected Parliament, and an independent Judiciary, which took so long to build! These features of modern political and legal doctrine are being used by critics who fear popular democratic outburst.
Firstly, it is the opposition which took the âthird-termâ debate to the masses, by organising seminars and radio talk-shows across the country. Now that PAFO, UYD, the so-called G7, Reform Agenda and Popular Resistance Against Third Term
funded by foreigners have accused the Movement of suspicious motives, it is only fair that the Government goes to the same court of popular public opinion.
This, the Movement will do not only to defend itself against false accusations but to explain, educate people and seek a resolution on the matter.
In any case, there are millions of wise men and women outside Parliament and the Judiciary, including Onyango, who are more able to speak for themselves than MPs often do. Delegation of responsibility does in no way mean abdication.
Critics of the referendum are the good and gentry leaders of pseudo âvanguard,â multipartyism or intellectuals like Onyango who qualify as expert because they articulate the consensus of the powerful.
They manage the business empires, ideological institutions and political structures, or serve them at various levels.
These elites believe it is their task to shepherd the bewildered herd and keep the âignorantâ multitude in a state of implist submission, and bar them from the dreaded prospect of freedom and self-determination.
But Onyango ought to be reminded that these ideas have been used before like when Spanish explorers set about what Tzvetan Todorov calls âthe greatest genocide in human historyâ after they âdiscoveredâ America 500 years ago.
The conquerors justified their acts of terror, oppression, subjugation and even mass murder on the grounds that the #natives were incapable of governing themselves any more than madmen or even wild beasts.
In fact, they argued, âtheir stupidity is much greater than that of children and madmen in other countries.â In much of Africa, blacks were unfit to sit in parliaments, let alone sharing buses and toilets with whites until ten years ago like in South Africa.
When English savages took over America, they continued taming âwolves in the guise of menâ as George Washington said, because they âwere being eliminated for their (Red Indians) own goodâ to create civilisation!
When President McKinley sent Indian fighters to âchristianiseâ and âuplift,â the Philippines, he accelerated their ascent to heaven, saying he was rescuing the âmisguided creatures.â
When Onyango calls a referendum âmob justice,â one is reminded of the 17th century political thinker Marchantmont Nedham who wrote of radical democrats thus: âIgnorant persons, neither of learning nor fortune, being in authority, the self-opinionated multitude, given freedom, would elect the lowest of the people, who would occupy themselves with milking and gelding the purse of the rich, taking the ready road to all licentious mischief and mere anarchy and confusion.â
In the US, after the revolution, rebellious and independent farmers were
taught by force that the ideals in the 1776 pamphlets were not to be taken seriously. The common people were not to represent themselves, but by the gentry, merchants, lawyers and others who hold and serve private power.
Presidents Thomas Jefferson (1801-9) and James Madison (1813-17) believed that power should be in the hands of ânatural aristocracy,â as opposed to Alexander Hamiltonâs âpaper aristocracy.â
They regarded the poor, slaves, paupers, blacks, negroes and labourers as an ever-present danger to liberty and property, and argued that âthe people who own the country ought to govern it.â Capitalism devised legal structures to grant it dominance over private and public life including popular democracy.
Frequently, political struggles pit aspirants to power against each other and this is not alien to Africa.
In Ugandaâs case, the current rise of the doctrine ridiculing the peasantry is because the critics know that meaningful popular democracy, and legal reforms threaten their exclusive prerogative to privilege.
Published on: Friday, 21st May, 2004 |
