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Dear Tingasiga:
According to The Monitor, Prime Minister Apollo Nsibambi told journalists last week that amending the constitution to enable President Yoweri Museveni to succeed himself in 2006 would not be injurious to good governance.
"In Britain as you know there are no term limits but the polity is democratic and we think that every five years people will have a chance to either reject that person or to renew his or her mandate.
So the critical issue is to ensure that the elections are there," Nsibambi reportedly said. âAs long as presidential elections are held regularly then the Presidency can always be checked against despotism.â
I have made the prime ministerâs acquaintance in recent years and have come to hold him in very high regard. He is not one to make statements without due consideration of the import that every word carries.
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| STRESSING A POINT: Prof. Nsibambi is one of the best things to happen to government |
To be sure Nsibambi, a former university professor of political science, is very well schooled in the history, theory and practice of democracy.
Therefore, after reading and re-reading the brief report of Nsibambiâs remarks, I concluded that the reporter either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented the prime ministerâs comments.
There is no way Dr Nsibambi would equate regular elections with democracy or good governance. There is no way he would even remotely pretend that Uganda possessed the political cultural strengths that underlie British democracy.
A quick survey of contemporary history reveals many examples of countries whose autocrats, dictators and political fraudsters would have a legitimate claim to being democrats if holding regular elections was the definition of democracy.
From Marshall Mobutuâs Zaire to Comrade Mugabeâs Zimbabwe; from Gnassingbe Eyademaâs Togo to Kenyatta/ Moiâs Kenya, the citizens held regular elections during which they âre-electedâ the rulers with landslide majorities over and over again.
Yet few people took such events as anything but charades meant to fulfil political rituals that appeased the despotsâ benefactors in Washington, London and Paris, and deceived the citizens that they were participating in their own governance.
Uganda has held many elections in its relatively short history, the majority of them during the reign of Museveni. More elections are on the agenda. Yet this does not mean much under the current circumstances.
You can hold annual presidential elections if you wish, but as long as it is only the incumbent and his supporters who enjoy the rights of democratic competition against a neutered and handcuffed opposition, the joke will be on you.
Ugandaâs rulers organised, ran and won fraudulent parliamentary elections in December 1980. But the joke was on them. Citizens, led by Mr Yoweri K. Museveni, took up arms in rebellion. Five years later, the country was on its knees, albeit with a functioning multi-party parliamentary âdemocracy.â
Although Ugandaâs rulers, now headed by the same Museveni who resisted the 1980 fraud, organised, ran and won a fraudulent presidential election in 2001, the joke was on them. They âwonâ power but lost all the credibility they had painstakingly built up over the years.
It was no surprise that the ruling National Resistance Movement [NRM] suffered major cracks, with many of its formidable leaders either quitting or being thrown out. Post-2001 Uganda has become more politically tense, more polarized and more militarized than it had been before the last presidential election. We now have talk of yet another armed rebellion, which has not done any favour to the countryâs image or economy.
And so the constitution will soon be amended to lift presidential term limits and to return to multi-party politics. The country will then hold yet another election, probably with President Museveni as the only candidate allowed the full freedom to campaign exploiting the public resources to sell himself to the electorate.
Indeed preparations are already underway to have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Major Kakoza Mutaleâs paramilitary enforcers to beat the electorate into line to ensure that Ugandans âvote wisely.â So the outcome of the 2006 election is fairly predictable.
And so the story will be if Museveni is candidate in 2011 and 2016 and 2021, and even 2026. [The constitution will probably be amended to remove age limits when Museveni hits his seventies.]
Museveni may keep âwinningâ his customary 70 per cent of the vote at each of those sham elections.
But such elections will not make Uganda any more democratic than it was in 1980. If anything, they will create conditions for a return to widespread violence.
We fool ourselves when we deny this reality. We fool ourselves when we accuse those who point out these truths of being warmongers.
Democracy demands that there be equal opportunities for all citizens to participate in their governance.
Even if one narrowly defines democracy in terms of competitive electoral politics, the minimum requirement is that the playing field be level, with equal and unfettered access by all to the opportunities to sway public opinion in oneâs favour.
In Uganda today, the president, the prime minister and their supporters enjoy the right and unlimited opportunities to campaign for their positions on serious national matters.
Those who support the presidentâs plan to change the constitution to enable him to succeed himself are free to merchandise their views throughout the country.
Yet those who hold alternative views are highly restricted, and even forbidden to campaign freely.
Some of the presidentâs courtiers have let it be known that those opposed to the Kisanja [Fith Term] fraud should not set foot in certain areas or else they will face the same violence that Museveniâs opponents endured during the 2001 presidential elections.
One hopes that Prime Minister Nsibambi, one of the most decent men our country has been lucky to employ in such a high position, will use his intellectual prowess and gift of communication to urge the president and the country to embrace democracy in its broadest and fullest sense.
As Uganda continues its journey towards democratization, the prime minister should remind us that democracy is a sham unless all the citizens are completely free to agree and disagree over policies, principles and personalities without suffering personal penalty.
He should remind us that democracy demands that all who seek electoral support must enjoy equal and completely unfettered access to the electorate and to public resources meant to facilitate free competition.
And he should remind the president and his courtiers that democracy has an ugly side to it, namely, a tendency to hand power to people with whom we disagree, and even despise. Thus Museveni must be prepared to accept the verdict should he be rejected at the polls. Of course the same applies to his opponents, as long as the elections are completely free and fair, beginning with the political processes long before voting day.
Dr Nsibambi should reach deep into his large fund of political science and educate us about the cultural and historical factors that have made it possible for Britain to change its elected leaders in the absence of term limits.
Unqualified references to the British experience are a cynical manipulation of a public that may not have the benefit of scholarship such as that which the prime minister and a small fraction of the population possess.
And while he is at it, the prime minister should refresh our minds on the reasons why the Americans decided to impose term limits on their presidents, and why the Ugandan Constituent Assembly did likewise only a decade ago.
I know that Dr Nsibambi used his extensive knowledge of comparative politics and history to make his correct decision to support presidential term limits during the formulation and promulgation of the current Constitution of the Republic of Uganda.
He was right in 1995. He should do the right thing in 2005. His legacy and honour are at stake.
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sorry we failed to run this column yesterday due to IT problems. We apologise to our esteemed readers for the inconvenience. - Ed.
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