[Ugnet] What is good for the goose is not good for the gander?

[musamize]

When NRM reported Obote to the C’wealth

FRED GUWEDDEKO Sunday Monitor, may 7 2006

A search in the NRM records reveals that in May 1981, its then chairman, Prof. Yusuf Lule, mounted a vigorous campaign to have the Commonwealth isolate Uganda because President Obote’s UPC government was a “murderous regime” that had months earlier rigged an election. (See letter) The NRM and Lule thus sought, without explicitly saying so, to have Uganda locked out of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting then slated to take place in the Australian city of Melbourne in October of that year. The letter’s main contention was that allowing Milton Obote to attend the CHOGM would amount to legitimising his “repressive minority regime backed…by Tanzanian troops under a bogus military pact”. President Museveni was Lule’s deputy and also commander of the NRA, the armed wing of NRM then just four months into the bush war, and must have been aware of the letter’s contents. A quarter century later, it is the same NRM now accusing the opposition FDC party of unpatriotically and selfishly campaigning for the cancellation of the same summit due in Kampala in November next year. How times change! Well, the NRM is in government and the FDC is not. The FDC has responded saying that it is merely drawing the attention of the Commonwealth leaders to human rights wrongs going on under the NRM government, itself re-elected on February 23 in a process the Supreme Court has adjudged neither free nor fair. The party concedes to reminding the Commonwealth of its bounden duty to uphold democracy, the conduct of free and fair elections, rule of law and constitutionalism in member states such as Uganda. The 1981 NRM campaign to the Commonwealth against the participation of Obote in the Melbourne summit is similar in subject and content to the one the FDC, led by its envoy to the UK and the European Union, is now being accused of waging. But appealing to foreign parties to help resolve leadership and governance problems in Uganda has in the past been practiced by most of those seeking power. In April 1975, the exiled Obote circulated a letter, also similar in subject and content to the ones by FDC and NRM before it, to African leaders urging them to abstain from that year’s OAU Summit in Kampala hosted by Idi Amin. If the issues raised by the opposition on all these occasions are genuine, then the import of these submissions to Uganda’s foreign partners is that there is essentially little or no difference between the regimes of Amin, Obote and Museveni in terms of power abuses, state terror, human rights violations, undemocratic leadership and absence of the rule of law. Interestingly, the efforts on all three occasions came to nothing. A quarter century later, it is the NRM now accusing the FDC party of selfishly campaigning for the cancellation of the Commonwealth Summit due in Kampala in November next year. How times change! Your Excellencies, The Commonwealth Prime Ministers and Heads of Government As you prepare to assemble for your conference in Melbourne, Australia, I must draw your attention to the appalling situation that exists in a fellow Commonwealth country - Uganda - which is again caught up in the grip of a brutal and murderous dictatorship. It is with the deepest regret that I must point out that the Commonwealth itself must bear a heavy responsibility for this state of affairs. You are aware that a Commonwealth Observer Group (COG) was in Uganda last December to observe the conduct of the elections which were supposed to restore Uganda to democratic government. It must be borne in mind that certain crucial stages in the electoral process were never witnessed by COG, such as the demarcation of boundaries, registration of voters and nomination of candidates - all of which were manipulated in favour of Milton Obote and his Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), supported by Paul Muwanga, head of the Military Commission, and effectively, Obote’s proxy as head of government. All foul and unfair means possible were employed, including the murder of opposing candidates, detention and the declaration that seventeen out of 126 constituencies were to be awarded unopposed to the UPC. Nevertheless, despite all these factors the people of Uganda were not to be deterred. On 10th December 1980, Ugandans went to the polls. By late afternoon on 11th December, it was clear that Obote and UPC were heading for resounding defeat. Their reaction was predictable. Muwanga usurped the powers of the Electoral Commission by a decree barring returning officers and the Commission itself from declaring any results unless such results were approved by him personally. His decree further directed all returning officers not to submit their constituency results to the Electoral Commission but to himself alone. A record fine equivalent to US$70,000 was imposed by Muwanga for non-compliance with his decree. At a conclave throughout the night of 11 December, Obote and Muwanga proceeded to reverse the authentic results and to allocate seats to their party cohorts, even where UPC candidates had polled less than 10% of the votes cast and had already conceded defeat. The following day, 12 December, 1980, using their control of the radio, the army, police and other machinery of state and backed by the Tanzania army, Obote and Muwanga announced their coup. The one became President, the other Vice-President and Minister of Defence. By the time the falsified results were declared on 12 December, the COG had left Uganda. Nevertheless the details of their report leaves no doubt as to the massive scale of manipulation and blatant rigging of the election as perpetrated by UPC. No conclusion other than that the entire election was a manifest fraud is possible. Against this background, the conclusion reached by the COG that on the whole the election was a ‘valid exercise’ is a curious one indeed. It is of course, entirely negated by the details of their own report. Fundamentally, the gravest possible damage has been done to Uganda by the COG’s trite conclusion which has led to a degree of legitimacy in no way justified by UPC’s electoral performance nor indeed by the consequent activities of Obote’s Government. It is not the intention of this document to give a catalogue of the human misery that now afflicts Uganda, the murders detentions - indeed the total collapse of the rule of law - which have forced Ugandans to take up arms and fight for their basic survival. Suffice it to say that the open support of certain Commonwealth states for Obote and his murderous regime have been carefully noted by all thinking Ugandans. Those who believe that they are promoting ‘political reconciliation and economic recovery for Uganda’ should note that neither reconciliation nor recovery are possible under Obote and his repressive minority regime backed, once more, by Tanzanian troops under a bogus military pact. The only way forward is to remove this evil man, root and branch, from the political life of Uganda, for good, and to send the Tanzanians back to their own Country. Your Excellencies, we appeal to you to recognise the responsibility you bear collectively for the present situation in Uganda and to consider your individual and collective relations with Uganda in the not too distant future when, we pray to God, Uganda will be free. Y.K. Lule, Chairman of the National Resistance Council National Resistance Movement From: Mission to Freedom: Collected Issues of Ugandan Resistance News 1981-1985 SEE RELATED STORY

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