Implications
of the Besigye judgement
COMMENT
BY THE EDITORS
The
judges have spoken. The people can now speak. The case is closed in the courts
of law. But it is still open in the court of public opinion.
The Supreme
Courts majority decision to dismiss the election petition filed by presidential
candidate Col Kizza Besigye raises serious questions for the future of this
countrys democracy that demand strong moral leadership from civil society.
At the start of the presidential campaigns last November, this newspaper
declared its independence and non-partisanship.
We convened the
presidential candidates and their representatives and issued our Election
Platform, which gave each candidate a chance to use the Daily Monitor to rollout
their manifestos.
We also launched Uganda Decides: 2006, which gave
the campaigns the best news coverage available in a Ugandan newspaper.
But we
also told the candidates that we would be neither neutral nor silent about the
quality of the election.
We told them we would take a stand on whether the
election was rigged or free and fair.
As one
of Uganda's most dependable advocates and defenders of democracy, the Daily
Monitor will not shy away now from offering this moral leadership and taking a
stand. We will not shy away from asking the difficult
questions.
We do
not begrudge President Museveni and the NRM the victory that has now been
confirmed by the Supreme Court. Museveni is now legally our nation's Chief
Executive for the next five years.
We at the Daily Monitor shall offer
him and his government our sincere respect and cooperation. And we shall support
all good policies, laws and actions of the NRM government.
All Ugandans
should respect the Constitution and accept that the ruling of the Supreme Court
is final.
No temptation to an unlawful response to defeat shall have our
support. We encourage the FDC and other opposition players to take heart,
strengthen their parties and their alternative policy platforms and try again in
2011, and we urge the NRM to respect their rights under the multi-party
system.
That said, let the truth be told about the elections we have just
come out of. In both the 2001 and 2006 elections, a majority of the Supreme
Court has found that the presidential elections were held in violation of the
Constitution, the Electoral Commission Act and the Presidential Elections
Act.
The list of violations that mar Ugandan elections is long and
worrying - and growing: disenfranchisement through deletion of voters' names
from the register; false tallying of votes cast by the Electoral Commission;
bribery and intimidation of voters; multiple voting; ghost voting; denial of
secret ballot rights; violence and murder.
In almost all cases, these
wrongdoings have been carried out by Museveni's supporters, the UPDF,
intelligence services and the Electoral Commission against opposition
supporters, particularly those of Dr Kizza Besigye
(right).
Given
his prior track record as a freedom fighter who went to the bush and fought a
heroic guerilla war because of UPC's rigging of the 1980 election; given his
global record as a defender of freedom and fairness, it is a disgrace and a
source of great worry for the future of Uganda that these electoral and human
rights offences have become the hallmark of President Yoweri Museveni's election
campaigns and those of the NRM.
In our view, Museveni and NRM supporters
have nothing to celebrate about the outcome of the latest Supreme Court ruling.
In the court of public opinion, they have not won a clean victory in a free and
fair election that would pass the test in a proud and just society. The outcome
of the Supreme Court ruling should be a cause for reflection and
self-assessment, not celebration.
In both 2001 and 2006, it was by only
one vote that Museveni secured a majority of judges against the overturning of
his victories. It is a tragedy for Uganda that after the deaths of 300,000
citizens in the Resistance War of 1981-86, Uganda, unlike her neighbours Kenya
and Tanzania and several other countries in Africa, has failed dismally in
progress towards elections that meet the universally accepted standards of a
free, fair and democratic society.
Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki, while
reading the Supreme Court's ruling, pointed out, as he did in 2001, serious
wrongdoings that could easily have been avoided if the President was morally and
seriously committed to competing on a clean platform: partisan involvement of
the army and the security services in the elections; partial (partisan) conduct
of some officials of the Electoral Commission; failure of the Electoral
Commission to manage the exercise transparently - and so on.
Ugandans will
for many years to come put the following questions to the MPs who write the
electoral laws and the judges who hear election petitions:
Where
should the standard of proof be drawn?
How low a standard
of freedom and fairness do you want to put in place for this
country?
How many people must be deleted from the register
and disenfranchised before the court is satisfied?
How
many must be bribed? What should the role of money be, in
elections?
How many citizens must be
intimidated?
How many ghosts should vote - and how many
times must they vote?
How much false tallying must the
Electoral Commission engage in for a petitioner to prove the
case?
How many falsehoods should a candidate peddle for
his actions to be declared an offence?
How many people
should be beaten up or chased away from polling centres by soldiers,
intelligence agents and partisan thugs?
How many Ugandans
should be murdered?!
How much evidence of these
wrongdoings can the victim of rigging be expected to gather in ten
days?
How much evidence can the court realistically expect
the wrongdoer to leave lying around for the victim to
gather?
Is there no qualitative measure for a free and
fair election? Can a presidential candidate truly prove a quantitative case in
ten days?
Will rigging continue in this country with no
consequences for wrongdoers?
Are we not moving steadily
towards a situation in which all future Ugandan elections can be rigged with
impunity because the standards have been set so low?
Can
justice be won in the courts?
The Museveni victory is now legal. But is it
legitimate? Is NRM proud of how they campaigned? It doesn't matter who the
winner was. We would have asked the same questions of Besigye if he had won such
a questionable victory. All the opinion polls commissioned by this newspaper
suggested Museveni was ahead. We believe he had a good chance of winning even if
the election had been free and fair.
But we also believe that most NRM
supporters yearned to see Museveni win without all these questions. We at the
Daily Monitor will not tire of advocating higher standards. Ugandans need to
search their souls. We deserve better.
The Daily Monitor puts this
question to President Museveni, the NRM party leadership and the senior
commanders of the UPDF and the security services: if you had been the runner-up
in the 2006 election, with Milton Obote as the winner, against the backdrop of
everything that went wrong in the election we have just gone through - would you
have sent congratulations to Obote if he had done to you what you have done to
Besigye?
Mr President, there is something dreadfully wrong with the moral
anchor of NRM when it comes to elections. Ugandans have not forgotten the
inspiring freedom fighter of 1986 who took the presidential oath at Parliament
on that great day and said "this is a fundamental change." That man can be seen
in the flesh, but not in his sense of rightness. We want him back.
Mr
President, what we ask of you is only what you have always said you stand for.
Go forth and work with your opponents - you cannot do it alone. Go forth, and
lead this country towards a free and fair election in 2011. We will support
you.
