One day it was an interim govt, next a political system
By Carol Alyek and Badru D. Mulumba
April 2, 2003
A 17-year love-hate tango between Movement and the political parties
The Movement says political parties brought the ban upon themselves; they were constituted along tribal and religious lines.
Yoweri Museveni wanted a total ban on parties soon after he was sworn in as president in 1986. Eriya Kategaya, as National Political Commissar, tried to hold talks with parties to see how party operations could be regulated.
Dr Kizza Besigye, as an army representative in NRC, moved a motion to extend the interim parliament and – in effect — Mr Museveni’s government in one of the first manoeuvres that doomed the parties.
Over the years, the cast seems to have remained the same, but the roles have changed. 17 years today, the players have been thrown on different paths but the issues just won’t go away. And it all began with Legal Notice Number One of 1986 as Carol Alyek and Badru D. Mulumba report: -
One main outcome from the National Conference meeting of Sunday and Monday is that it has thickened the suspicion between key players in the Movement and the multiparty camps. Even within the Movement ranks, loyalties were never a clear black or white, they were often tinted.
You could read as much from Mr Museveni’s remarks at the Movement National Executive Committee meeting at the National Leadership Institute at Kyankwanzi of 26 March. It was this underlying mistrust that Mr Museveni glossed over as he announced the freeing of political parties.
| NEC FRONT ROW: Left to right, Mr Godfrey Binaisa, Mr Kintu Musoke and Mr Jotham Tumwesigye at Kyankwanzi last week (PPU photo). |
“The Movement will remain more or less as it is now,” he said, “but allow those who never welcomed pluralism in unity to go. We should unload them.”
President Museveni feels that this will strengthen the organisation as per the recommendations of the ad hoc committee set up in December 2001 to review calls by some key figures in the Movement that it was time to free political parties.
The National Political Commissar, Dr Crispus Kiyonga, chaired this committee. But at the National Conference in Kampala, which immediately followed the NEC meeting, many members could not make out what the president, who is also the Movement chairman, meant when he said that his would not become a political party when the country returns to multiparty democracy.
So why would he want to “strengthen” it? It is a scenario that many people from both camps don’t quite understand.
It might be surprising, but hardly unusual.
How did it get to this point?
It all started in 1986. Mr Museveni and his guerrillas of the National Resistance Army had toppled the government of Gen. Tito Okello Lutwa. The president was sworn in and he immediately formed a government.
The Movement was supposed to be all-inclusive, a government of national unity. The parties gave it the benefit of the doubt because it was a chaotic time in the country.
“UPC was nursing its own wounds. It retired to Uganda House. DP was excited that UPC was overthrown,” said party member Mr Omara Atubo who was then Minister of State for Defence. Today, he is the MP for Otuke County.
The Uganda People’s Congress and the Democratic Parties were the main parties at the time.
Immediately after taking power in January 1986, Mr Museveni issued a decree. It was called Legal Notice One of 1986. Under this the National Resistance Movement would form a government of national unity with all the parties represented. The interim government would last no more than four years.
“There was no immediate Gentleman’s Agreement after take over from General Tito Okello. There was no elected parliament,” Mr Atubo said.
A four-year interim period: that was how the political parties saw the NRM. They looked forward to a peaceful situation in future where political parties could function. In this situation, they hoped, the NRM would also become a party.
“We were all dedicated to normalising the country. We looked at what type of government it would be after four years; [we knew] it was a multiparty competition,” said Mr Atubo.
| Interim structure: Mr Njuba |
Mr Sam Njuba, a Movement historical right from the bush war and minister for Constitutional Affairs during the first nine years recalls: “The Movement was a temporary arrangement. Nobody said it was a permanent arrangement, not even a system. It was not. It was an arrangement and they knew it would end in five years.”
Mr Njuba is now the vice-chairperson of the Reform Agenda, a splinter group of the Movement headed by exiled former presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye.
He however, believes that these early years served both the Movement and the DP well.
The Movement wanted support. The DP on the other hand, feared it would not defeat UPC in a multiparty election at that point.
It was a question of survival.
“UPC was already a black sheep. The DP was not sure if they would achieve anything in a multiparty election. A bird you had was better than two in the bush. It was a question of no risks. You go in the darkness, rather than stay in the limelight and collapse,” said Mr Njuba.
Interestingly, though Mr Museveni wanted to ban parties from the moment he came into power he never got his way. At least, not immediately.
“NEC and the National Resistance Council refused. They said that if he banned parties it would cause problems,” Mr Atubo said.
Mr Atubo believes this was because the people who were at the heart of the Movement regarded themselves as members of one party or the other.
“They were all party faithfuls, none of them would have accepted a ban,” said Mr Atubo.
He adds, “You see the Movement people were shrewd in the way they operated. They knew that if they came out openly they would not look any better than Idi Amin and would get problems with the international community.”
The first four years
In Cabinet at that time political issues were hardly discussed. NEC meetings were not open but the NRC meetings were.
The government begun to give ministerial posts to people with political party backgrounds such as Mr Sam Kutesa and Ms Specioza Kazibwe – a move Mr Atubo believes was meant to compel them to shift allegiances from their parties to the NRM.
“Most people belonged to the existing parties. The Movement recruited from political parties and weakened them, especially in Buganda. I think the DP were wiped out,” he said.
The president appointed the DP’s chairman Paul Ssemogerere as second Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs while the Conservative Party leader Jehoash Mayanja-Nkangi became Minister of Finance and Economic Planning.
Now that they had eaten big they would dance to the master’s tune. But Mr Atubo prefers the Middle Eastern tent-camel analogy.
When the camel’s nose gets into the tent, the rest of the camel is sure to follow.
He says that this strategy of weakening of parties succeeded in the Buganda region and in the west. At that time, Michael Kaggwa the chairman of a Democratic Party group known as ‘the mobilisers’ said, “Obote wanted to kill political parties by violence, Museveni wants to kill them by kindness — by giving us ministerial posts.”
After that the Movement begun opening branches across the country and assigned members of the political parties to head them.
Mr Njuba, a member of the DP before he joined NRM in the bush, backs the parties’ decision to participate during the interim period.
“It is erroneous to assume that Museveni had people separate from parties. The people who fought in Luwero were members of the DP that were defeated by Obote,” he said.
“[Luwero] was close to the city. Support of the people, was essential. In essence DP contributed to the fall,” Mr Njuba said.
End of the honey moon
After the first four years, things started moving pretty fast. There were fears however that many political leaders, especially from the UPC background, were still optimistic for their parties’ revival.
Mr Atubo believes that one reason for his arrest in 1989 was the desire for government to create its own strong men to direct its philosophy.
“It was a hidden agenda. Eighteen political leaders of northern Uganda were removed. It was meant to remove existing leaders who were not pro-government and replace them with Movement supporters. You could see after the arrest that the late Cosmas Adyebo was appointed,” Mr Atubo said.
Kategaya in failed talks
“I remember in 1989/90 government started coming out to propose a sort of negotiation. Mr Kategaya chaired at least two preliminary meetings with DP/UPC. Beyond those, there was nothing positive,” recalls Mr Atubo.
Mr Kategaya, then the National Political Commissar, is a deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Internal Affairs today.
The meetings were supposed to chart out a way for what parties could or could not do in that temporary framework. Mr Atubo recalls that UPC was not in favour of the chairmanship of Mr Kategaya.
“UPC said Mr Kategaya could not be chairman. That bogged down the meetings. UPC rejected further meetings.”
Mr Njuba said that the dialogue eventually collapsed.
“DP and government regularly met. The [meetings] collapsed and there are no reports [on them]. But I think it was an effort; it was like courting a girl and the magic doesn’t click.”
But the break down of the talks did not stop the government from announcing some control over the parties in 1989.
“There were government pronuncements. An administrative ban of party activities was announced which to me was like giving you food and not allowing you to eat,” Mr Atubo said.
The hammer finally came down when the government decided that the Movement political system was in force. It effectively meant that the Movement system and the political party democracy could not operate together. This included ban of public rallies and limiting party activities to headquarters.
Museveni takes fight to NRC
If there is one thing that the four years of working with the parties had taught Mr Museveni it was that the NRC and the NEC, both full of multiparty loyalists, would never resolve to extend the interim Parliament, something he needed to seal the parties’ fate. It was a lesson he learnt well.
He shifted the battle lines.
One year to the expiry of the NRC in 1989, the Movement called countrywide elections. These were the first elections of representatives to the NRC from each county in the country.
The NRC had hitherto been formed mainly of ministers and historicals, many of them from the DP and the Uganda Patriotic Movement background.
Significantly, it was Dr Kizza Besigye who in 1989 moved the motion to extend the NRC and Mr Museveni’s four-year interim government by five years.
“Imagine all these people had just come into parliament. These ‘freshers’ were suddenly confronted by Mr Kizza Besigye’s motion for extending parliament. Mr Besigye moved the motion, and the House went up in uproar,” Mr Atubo said.
Mr Atubo remembers that four NRC members opposed the move. They wanted parliament to take the matter to the people and to go to district levels and get people’s views and arrive at a consensus.
These were the then Minister of Health, Adoko Nekyon, the then Minister of Education, Ambrose Okullu, a member of the DP Wasswa Ziritwawula (who later resigned from parliament) and Omara Atubo then Minister of State for Defense.
“Our position was that Parliament could not extend itself without going back to the people,” said Mr Atubo.
He believes that the extension was from a selfish point of view. “It was undemocratic, it reminded people of the 1967 extension.” In 1967, parliament passed a new Constitution that extended the UPC government by five years. The government of Prime Minister Milton Obote, in power since 9 October 1962, was due to expire that year.
Parties fate goes to CA
It was during the Constituent Assembly in 1994 that the Movement turned into a system. The CA debated and promulgated the 1995 Constitution.
“That is when people manipulated each other. They had climbed so high they wanted to stay in power. There were strong debates. The word system was coined in the CA,” said Mr Njuba.
He maintains that during the time when he was a cabinet minister everybody understood the Movement to be a transitional arrangement.
Interestingly, according to Mr Njuba, the banning of parties and turning the Movement into a system were not necessarily the work of Mr Museveni alone. There were people who saw themselves out of power if Mr Museveni quit and these played a key role.
“But then, certainly, they were running out of excuses. After the transition what would happen? They said that Museveni must continue to oversee the transition. It was no longer NRM but Movement,” he says.
But who were the brains behind this?
“It was a few hard-liners who wanted to preserve their status. Some in UPC prepared to stay in the Movement.”
But Mr Njuba agrees that the fear of the political parties contributed to the ban too. “Talk about the UPC and everyone runs away.”
Lingering mistrust
A referendum ultimately came and went, leaving political parties all but dead in its wake. Or at least that is the way it seemed back in 2000.
Then in 2001 notables in the Movement hierarchy like Mr Kategaya and Local Government minister Jaberi Bidandi Ssali began making the sounds that culminated in an ad hoc committee a NEC meeting, a return to multiparty democracy and – now – a third presidential term.
But the mistrust refuses to go away. Says Mr Atubo: “When we go to the referendum, where will Mr Museveni vote? Movement or multiparty? In any case, he has given multiparty [democracy] with one hand. He has not been helpful to the country because the two systems can’t operate together.”
| Arrested: Mr Atubo. |
It is significant that what a political observer indicated just before the NEC — that the president’s desire to free political parties would be granted but those keen on their own survival would insist on giving him a third term — came to pass on Monday night.
To Mr Atubo, the same factors at play back in the day when a transitional government became a political system are all too apparent today.
He says, “Until Mr Museveni leaves power, I don’t think he is going to leave power.”
© 2003 The Monitor Publications
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Just a note:-
I wish some of these people would stop referring to Killer M7 as "Mr..". M7 is a general just like Musa Ali and the others like Kategeya, Bidadi Ssali are, all have military titles.
All of these gentlemen are gunmen! Referring to them as "Mr.." is "indiscipline" the punishment of which must be hanging in the village square!
To call a trained killer "Mr.." is a sign of stupidity.
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