By Henry Ochieng
May 2 - 8, 2004
It is time to rummage through the cobweb of political intrigue, manoeuvre and positioning that has characterised events of the past two weeks.
Members of the political opposition are screaming blue murder at government�s proposals for a roadmap for the anticipated transition from a Movement system to the more democratic Multi-party system. But even as they shouted last week, the picture that seemed to emerge in some quarters was one of confusion. On the table was report of a Cabinet sub-committee on political transition with, among others, two key recommendations about holding two referenda; one to ask the people whether Article 105(2) of the constitution should be deleted from the Constitution so as to expunge the concept of presidential term limits. The second proposed referendum is on whether the country should jettison the Movement system of government for political pluralism. In reaction to the report, the Reform Agenda (RA) political pressure group has not given a very good account of itself recently. First it said it would register as a political party under the contentious Political Parties and Organisations Act of 2002 (PPOA) � an action that would buffer its participation in the process of political transition. This decision was reached at a consultative meeting of the RA�s district delegates in Kampala on April 16 - 17. However, a day after the Cabinet report became public, Mr Joseph Tumushabe, RA�s human rights secretary, had this to say: �The issue of our registration as a political party has aroused a lot of excitement but we want to state that it is not possible to register in this circus. As long as the bottlenecks still exist, we are not going to register�. He said although they are still collecting signatures around the country � a prerequisite to registration under the law � �it does not amount to registration�. Group chairman, Col. Kizza Besigye has been consistent about not registering under existing circumstances. With observers confounded, the organisation�s deputy chairman Sam Njuba called a news conference on Thursday to �clear the air�. He said the resolution of the consultative meeting has to be approved by their National Council depending on how the Supreme Court will rule on a pending petition filed by RA and the Uganda People�s Congress (UPC) challenging sections of the parties� law. Njuba said, �There is no contradiction regarding registration by any Reform Agenda officials, the only difference being points of emphasis. While some officials emphasised timing, others emphasised the matter of registration�� The RA is therefore ready to register as its publicity secretary, Ms Betty Kamya said in a phone conversation on Wednesday with Sunday Monitor that they will be part of �the process of change in this country�. Just how that process progresses remains the vexed question that all forces are grappling with. The Director for Information at the Movement Secretariat, Mr Ofwono Opondo says one avenue President Yoweri Museveni may consider is the formation of a new party. The President officially identified himself with the nascent National Resistance Movement Organisation (NRMO). NRMO was registered to provide for continuity of today�s incumbent political club in office.
But cracks have appeared in its body politic with senior promoter and former local government minister, Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, insisting he will resist any attempts by Museveni to use NRMO to seek a �third term� as President. Seen in that light, Opondo�s suggestion of a new party becomes attractive if for nothing else but to avoid potentially injurious acrimony. But this is a wish that may run into legal difficulty because of Article 105(2) of the Constitution that states: �A person shall not be elected under this constitution to hold office as President for more than two terms as prescribed by this article�. Terego County MP, Wadri Kassiano Ezati, an increasingly visible member of the Democratic Party (DP), warns that �even if the President formed another party it would not help him to run again for another term because 105(2) is specific to the individual. But that article is open to amendment or deletion. Ezati recognised that there is a lot of wheeling and dealing going on in the background as either side of this question works to build its numbers in Parliament. The way things are, the battle will be joined in the House. DP�s contribution to this on-going action seems constrained by suspicions that it does not have an unshakable position. Mr Jude Mbabaali, addressing a news conference last week, declared that DP would boycott the proposed referenda. He has since been denounced as an interloper, first diplomatically by President General Dr Paul Ssemogerere who said no decision has been made because �it is too early�, and more emphatically by Makindye East MP Micheal Mabikke. Ezati also said Mbabaali is �not competent� to speak for DP because Article 27 of their constitution gives the spokesman role to either the President General or Secretary General, who in this case is city lawyer Damiano Lubega. The other fear is the lack of consensus on future DP leadership. Opondo cheerfully noted that Dr Ssemogerere has surrounded himself �with young Catholic Baganda in a war for control of the party which they will not win�. He also says that Ezati is part of an energised DP Parliamentary caucus whose priority is �to wrest control of the party from Catholic Buganda�. The picture gets hazy when you trace the historical behaviour of this party�s members. With the exception of members from northern Uganda, faithful from the rest of the country have at one time or another �crossed the floor�. In the 1960s, some DP members from Buganda joined the UPC government, others from the east did the same in 1980 and Dr Ssemogerere was in the Museveni administration until 1999. MP Gulu Municipality, Norbert Mao is now threatening to run for President in 2006, a move that would complicate DP�s intentions of fielding a single candidate separate from the one who will most likely be fielded by a coalition of political forces opposed to Museveni. DP�s woes may have something to do with what Opondo called �infiltration to weaken your opponent�. Senior DP member J.B. Kakooza agrees. �They are over-infiltrating us to bog us down,� he said. These are internal matters that should be sorted out, according to Kakooza, who said on Wednesday that the party is focussed on the transition. In denouncing the roadmap, he said the incumbent administration must be �politically honest and repeal the Movement Act to de-link the Movement from the state�. This separation is useful primarily because under the Act the political machinery of Museveni is oiled by public money, which is a big plus. Kakooza also holds that a new PPOA has to be written with the participation of all political forces to set rules that will not favour any side. But he does not envisage the writing of a rulebook for the purposes of holding referenda. A referendum on political systems is as repugnant to him as it is to the G7. �Who is going to campaign for the other side if both the Movement and parties agree on the transition to multi-partyism? This is wasting time, why go to the masses just to make a political point for propaganda reasons?� he asked. He sees � intimidation and rigging purposes� in the referenda because it is more difficult to rig in Parliament. The 1995 Constitution is specific about where and when referenda can be resorted to. Under Article 99(3), as President, Museveni is directed thus; �It shall be the duty of the President to abide by, uphold and safeguard this Constitution...� It is therefore, argued that he should respect Article 105(2) which limits a person to two presidential terms since his eligibility for election was exhausted in 2001. But the pro-third term group counter that the quandary can be resolved by deletion of Article 105(2) to automatically restore Museveni�s right to be elected President as long as he wishes. They are, however, not sure that Parliament will open term limits unless pressured. DP�s Kakooza sees pressure by intimidation in the mooted referendum. Superficial analysis will momentarily suggest that a referendum on Article 105(2) against the basis of the Prof. Ssempebwa Constitutional Review Commission report makes sense. One of the commission�s recommendations was that Ugandans vote in a referendum on presidential term limits. That recommendation was music to the ears of a Cabinet that had already tabled The Referendum and Other Provisions Bill, 2003 before Parliament to clear the legal ground to proceed under the Article 255 of the constitution, which reads: �Parliament may by law make provision for the right of citizens to demand the holding by the Electoral Commission of a referendum whether national or in any part of Uganda, on any issue�. Therein seems to lie the pressure button for the Musevenists. The way they see it is that Parliament will be �morally bound� to delete Article 105(2) once the people have said yes in a referendum. But this is also a strategy built on sandy soil, because while Article 255 may give Ugandans the right to demand a referendum to determine whether certain provision(s) of the constitution can be reviewed or not, it does not give Ugandans even a remote right to dictate through a referendum how those provisions should be amended. No single provision on constitutional amendment (Chapter 18) allows the use of Article 255 for the purpose of amending the constitution. Even in Article 259, where referenda are provided for, the referenda are not held to amend the constitution but to approve Parliament�s amendment of any of the specified provisions once voted for. Thus, none of the referenda can be held unless Parliament has pronounced itself on the constitutional amendment bill. If any such bill fails, no referendum will be held. And if held, it will be unconstitutional and redundant. The referendum cannot also be held after Parliament has pronounced itself on Article 105(2). The constitution does not provide for a referendum on this clause, and so once Parliament has voted on the matter the position arrived at is final. To hold a referendum, Article 259 itself must first be amended through a referendum to provide for the referendum. The other argument for a referendum on term limits under Article 255 is that since money is available for the referendum on political systems, it will do no harm to let the people also pronounce themselves on term limits because, after all, people�s participation is the greatest hallmark of democracy. That is an argument that was put forward by Mr Opondo who said the �basic principle of the Movement is that it is a mass organisation and we are not going to abandon it because the Movement and the parties seem to be agreeing on the return to Multi-partyism�. Opondo said the masses must be part of the process so that posterity will not judge the incumbent administration harshly if things go wrong. This would resonate with the provisions of the constitution under Article 1, which says: �All power belongs to the people who shall exercise their sovereignty in accordance with this constitution�. The key factor, however, here is �� in accordance with the constitution� because that is what makes it binding, to read the constitutional provisions together and not in isolation. For argument�s sake, assuming then that a referendum on political systems was tenable, there is still the Article 74(1) and (2) to contend with. The first section says it can be held if requested by resolution of Parliament, while the second section provides that the political system may also be changed through resolutions of the district councils and Parliament, or petition to the Electoral Commission. With both the proponents of the Movement System and the Multi-partyists fully agreement on the shift to pluralism, the ever-present questions now are: what will the referendum serve? Why waste money (Shs 30 billion) of tax �payers� money? Conservative Party chief, Mr Jehoash Mayanja Nkangi said in an interview during the week, �if I were them I would choose the shortest route�. He also trashed the case being made of the 2000 referendum on political systems. There is also the matter of credibility of the 2000 referendum. While the Movement claimed a landslide victory, its opponents said the process was lopsided and the result empty because only a negligible percentage of Ugandans participated in it. Where does this leave Dr Apollo Milton Obote�s UPC? Mr Yona Kanyomozi, member of the East African Legislative Assembly and unrepentant party stalwart confirms the view that the 2000 referendum cannot be invoked as a necessary precedent �Ugandans did not fully participate in it, it was not properly conducted, in fact less than 50% of Ugandans participated,� he said over the phone. Kanyomozi makes the point that Ugandans were �never consulted in a referendum when the NRM imposed a de facto one party state� and that political pluralism, where there is fair competition on equal ground, is a human right that cannot be subjected to a vote. Deputy chair of the congress� Presidential Policy Commission, Henry Mayega gave the official view that the roadmap is �a package of hurdles that the Movement government has all along been placing in the way of transformation into pluralistic politics � The party believes that government�s insistence on a referendum against �popular reason� is an indication of insincerity. They also say that Cabinet remained silent on fundamental political, military and civil aspects of the transition. Early in the year, the G7 and a government side led by National Political Commissar, Dr Crispus Kiyonga should have held transition talks but by March, the process had collapsed. Government was accused of trickery. Oyam North MP, Ben Wacha said in a sit-down in the main lobby of Parliament Buildings that �there was every indication that government did not have goodwill towards sensible transition�. Wacha, who is also a senior member of the UPC, said an opportunity that would have �narrowed the differences between both camps� was thus lost. In the result, he says the way forward lies in government engineering a review of a raft of laws to wit: the PPOA, Police Act, Local Government Act, Anti-Terrorism Act and the Movement Act. The above laws have the collective effect of suppressing political dissent and maintaining an environment that makes free political activity impossible. The allegations that government was using the excuse of the failed transition talks, as a smokescreen for its other motives tends to gain currency when the Buganda Kingdom factor is brought into play. President Museveni has recently said he is willing to �talk to his Mengo friends� in a move that has been interpreted as an offer for a trade-off. Mengo wants more political power from the central government and according to sources is willing to consider throwing its considerable clout in the politically significant central region behind Museveni�s �suspected life presidency� wishes. But there is pressure from the international community for change in Uganda and the Donor, Democracy and Governance group here has been explicit on the subject. Borrowing a leaf from the donor community�s fears on April 15, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group released a report on the war in the north that said:
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