| Fifty-three Constituent Assembly delegates refused to endorse the 1995 Constitution. Below is a heavily edited September 22, 1995 press statement, they issued to explain why. It is an interesting flashback in light of the ongoing constitutional debate in Parliament:-
Constituent Assembly P.O. BOX 7272 Kampala
The National Caucus for Democracy has, after two days debate on the enactment of the new Constitution, decided that it will not endorse in toto the new Constitution in its present form. For this reason, NCD has decided to reject those parts of the Constitution, which have denied Ugandans their fundamental human rights and freedoms as well as their sovereignty to govern themselves through a federal form of government. The effect of this decision is that the NCD delegates will not endorse the new Constitution by signing it or attesting to it by promulgation until those objectionable parts have been amended. It will be recalled that when members of the NCD returned to the Assembly after our walkout of the Assembly on the 20th June, 1995, we undertook to press for the reconsideration of certain fundamental provisions in the draft Constitution that had been rejected by the NRM Caucus. We promised to work together with the other delegates in a spirit of cooperation hoping that our colleagues would consider their positions and allow the re-opening of discussions on federalism, multi-party democracy and the election of parliament and the president on the same day. Although motions to re-open these articles of reconsideration were moved by our members, the NRM Caucus rejected them out of hand without allowing a debate on them. In contrast to this arrogant and contemptuous rejection of our motions on these important issues, the NRM Caucus readily re-opened discussions on trivial motions, which were moved by its members, some of which had to be abandoned at the last moment. Furthermore, the NRM Caucus introduced motions which revised earlier agreed positions during the consideration stage for the worse. For instance, the position of the political parties to open and �operate� party branches before Parliament has made a law regulating political party activities. This is a flagrant infringement of the rights of Ugandans to associate themselves freely through political organisations of their choice. The NRM Caucus also made new amendments which further hardened the provisions which would have sought the changing of the political system from the �Movement Political System� to multi-partyism by requiring that Parliament shall not, even by a two-thirds majority, amend this part of this Constitution without holding a referendum on the issue. All these manoeuvres were in fact aimed at entrenching the �Movement Political System�� This cynicism and arrogance exhibited by the NRM Caucus in the Constituent Assembly has revealed a fundamental flaw of the whole constitution making exercise. First it has shown that the whole purpose of creating special representation in the Assembly was intended to create an artificial majority in the Assembly for the purposes of blocking the achievement of a consensus among popularly elected delegates. Secondly, the use of material inducements to buy off some delegates from carrying out their mandates has characterised this whole exercise. It is an open secret that a majority of delegates who were elected in Buganda were elected on a federo ticket. It is also an open secret that many delegates from other parts of Uganda who joined the �movement� bandwagon were originally elected on a multi-party ticket. Since these delegates came to the Assembly, they were diverted from their mandates by offers and promises of ministries, ambassadorships and positions on boards of directors of certain parastatal corporations and membership of certain public commissions. Thirdly, there has been a persistent interference by government in the work of the Assembly on issues like decentralisation versus federalism and NRM versus multipartyism. A clear example of this was the letter written by President Museveni to �NRM Caucus� delegates in which he directed them to support certain positions which he personally preferred... This made consensus on the above issues impossible to achieve in the Assembly since the NRM Caucus took the positions of the government and the President to be sacrosanct which had to be passed and inserted in the constitution at any cost while rejecting those positions which were advanced by the NCD delegates. The NCD therefore feels that the constitution making process has been hijacked to suit the sectional interests of one political opinion on very fundamental provisions of the new Constitution because of the inflexible positions which have been adopted by the NRM Caucus in total disregard of the views of Ugandans who did not agree with the President�s position... A constitution is not a document where the majority imposes its positions on minorities. A constitutional dispensation should seek to accommodate all the views of the people because a Constitution is a contract between all the people and their government as well as between themselves. This fundamental condition has not been met in the new Constitution. What has happened instead is that the Constituent Assembly was turned into an NRM delegates� conference to implement their hidden agenda which the people of Uganda had feared, according to the Odoki report. The people feared all the time that their involvement in the constitution making process was being used to legitimise an NRM institution which had already been predetermined... The NCD has therefore decided to reject the following parts of the new Constitution because of the reason we have given above: We reject Article 69,70 and 71 (all dealing with the �Movement political system�) because they deny the people of Uganda their fundamental freedoms and rights to associate and to compete for political power through political organisations of their choice. We reject Article 5(2) because it does not reflect the regions of Uganda which were purportedly created in the first schedule. Moreover the import of this Article does not put into account Chapter 11 on Local Government. We reject Article 176, which rejected regions as units of federal governance, as well as Article 178 (3-4), which �deemed� Buganda to have agreed to unite, while at the same time giving those districts, which did not agree to be deemed to have united to �opt-out� of such arrangement. We finally reject Articles 269 and 271 in Transitional Provisions because these provisions violate the freedom of political parties to operate normally. These articles will also subject Ugandans to a system of election for the forthcoming general elections, which is inconsistent with their freedom to associate freely. This right was guaranteed in Article 29 (1) (e) of the new Constitution...
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