|
Ear to The Ground By Charles Onyango-Obbo |
From ‘new breed’ to ‘new greed’: Museveni, NEC on slippery road
April 2, 2003
Last week I won more bets than I could keep count of. I had bet with many friends, both inside and outside the Movement, that - as these pages have argued in the last three years - President Yoweri Museveni would seek an extension of the presidential term.
But not even the most cynical observer would have wagered that Mr Museveni would propose to the ruling Movement’s National Executive Committee (NEC) that the Constitution be amended not only to grant the president a third term, but to allow him/her rule for life (for that is what the absence of term limit in Africa means).
On the other hand, the president proposed to NEC what on the face of it seems like progressive changes - lifting the ban on political party activities.
For sure the fury of debate these proposals have unleashed in Uganda would not have happened in one African country – Nigeria. Nigeria has had the most presidents coming and going mostly through coups, but a sprinkling through the vote. In common, they have all cheated the people and broken their promises. The result is that Nigerians are easily the most cynical Africans about politics.
Last week I met a leading Nigerian intellectual in Nairobi on my way to Kampala. He had read the story of President Museveni’s free-parties-in-exchange-more-presidential-terms proposal in the Daily Nation.
He was beside himself with laughter. He told me that in Nigeria, from the very start they referred to the “New Breed” of African leaders (Yoweri Museveni, Bakili Muluzi [Malawi], Paul Kagame [Rwanda], Meles Zenawi [Ethiopia], Issayas Aferworki [Eritrea], late Laurent Kabila [Congo], to name a few) as Africa’s “New Greed”. They were either greedy for power, or wealth, or both.
One of the admirable factors about this “new breed”-to-“new greed” grid (no pun intended) is its sheer style. Thus a term extension goes through NEC, to the Constitutional Review Commission; to a national referendum; and eventually to Parliament. This is partly because below the smooth surface of democratic ritual, something very sinister is happening.
To appreciate this, one needs to factor in what is easily the most abominable constitution amendment proposal – the one by the Electoral Commission to make registration for elections mandatory. How does this explain the long-term political plan by the undemocratic clan in the Movement government?
Freeing political parties is only one element of democracy. It is not necessarily the most important, and it is not sufficient on its own without other factors like term limits, independence of the judiciary, sovereignty of parliament, free and fair elections, a free press, and economic prosperity.
The Ugandan courts, as they did in the case of the Referendum Act some four years back, and lately with the Political Organisations Act, have often ruled bad laws to be unconstitutional. The new proposals to neuter the courts means that they are less likely to do so in future.
Then, the only way the public has been able to deal with senior political leaders who abuse their office or are corrupt is through censure by Parliament.
The NEC proposal that only the president should now exercise this censure takes that away. The effect of granting that power to the president is that, as was the case in Kenya during the rule of Daniel arap Moi, we shall have a large class of people who amass wealth corruptly, but they are shielded from all censure by an elected body.
They become beholden to their sole protector, the president. This proposal therefore seems to have been strategically created to allow the president create a new patronage network.
One might argue that if these things will anger voters, now with the political parties freed, they can throw out the Movement government. However, the timing envisaged for these changes means Uganda will remain effectively a one-party state for the next nine years.
The decision to lift the ban on parties through a referendum, which can happen at the earliest in mid-2004, means that a vote for it can only be passed into law at the earliest end of 2004. If we then have a parties law along the lines of the POB, the political parties might only get off the blocks in mid-2005.
By then the Movement will have re-organised, and would be sprinting to the finishing line of the 2006 polls. The chance for a level playing field for the parties, therefore, might come only in 2012!
It is possible that those hurdles can still be overcome by smart parties. And that is where the EC’s proposal for compulsory registration comes in. It is unusual that a proposal for compulsory registration is not coupled with one for compulsory voting.
This, however, could have been done to solve a big problem in Ugandan politics – the difficulty of concealing an election theft. The failure by the UPC to conceal an election swindle in December 1980, led to the Museveni bush war.
The failure by the present government to conceal the 2001 ballot malpractices, led to a radicalisation of sections of the population, and the formation of the new rebel group, People’s Redemption Army, which many believe is linked to former presidential candidate (rtd) Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye.
Compulsory registration, in a situation of low turn-out, will remove the need to create ghost voters and reduce the possibility for cheats to be caught easily stealing the vote. There will now be genuine voters, who can be allocated to the government candidate, and thus cut down the risk to stability through rebellion by people who are angry at obvious electoral fraud.
The proposals by the president, that have now been adopted by NEC, make one step forward on parties, but are also three steps backward because they take away the independence of the courts, of parliament, and threaten free and fair elections. When you add the numbers, the net effect is that the president and Movement NEC have set the country two major political steps back.
Author’s emails:- [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED]
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
