'No 3rd Term for Museveni'
The Monitor (Kampala)
July 11, 2003
Posted to the web July 11, 2003
Richard M. Kavuma
Kampala
Leading personalities from Kenya and Tanzania have opposed President Yoweri Museveni's attempts to seek a "third term".
An East African seminar on political succession in Kampala yesterday came to life as it boiled down to a debate for and against changing constitutions to keep leaders in power.
"The system of a fixed term for the presidency should be consolidated," said Tanzania's former vice president and prime minister, Justice Joseph Warioba.
Mr Warioba delivered the keynote address at the seminar, organised by the East African Centre for Constitutional Development and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation at the International Conference Centre.
Amid clapping from the audience that had otherwise listened quietly, Warioba added: "It is a system which will remove the 'chief' mindset, and it will also prevent ushering in dictators."
Warioba, now a judge at the East African Court of Justice, said that a maximum of two five-year terms is long enough for a "good leader to make important achievements and short enough for people to tolerate a poor leader."
Professors Ssemakula Kiwanuka and Tarsis Kabwegyere (Ugandan ministers for Luwero Triangle and Local Government, respectively), kicked up a storm when they supported the third term with reference to the power being in the hands of the people and the ongoing constitutional review processes.
Then came Ms Raychelle Omamo, a former president of the Law Society of Kenya, who spoke of an emerging democratic culture in East Africa "I don't think there should be any questions about President Museveni leaving power: he must go," she almost shouted. "A leader who stays in power for so long is a liability to his people.
Leaders who were visionaries once cannot be visionaries for eve."
