Ssemakadde sacks Attorney General: The drama begins

Several lawyers responding to this announcement pointed out that the decision was unconstitutional and, if it were to be carried out at all, must go through a series of legal procedures.

Two lawyers filed a case with the High Court requesting a hearing for November 15 to hear the matter and bring Ssemakadde to order.

To recap the analysis I wrote after Ssemakadde’s landslide election in late September, the Uganda Law Society election was probably the most important election of any kind in Uganda since the 2021 General Election.

“In Uganda of the 2020s, lawyers as a barometer of society are growing in weight as the public feels let down by the political class and, as a counter to the increasingly authoritarian NRM state,” I explained in Sunday Monitor of October 6.

As they see it, there is growing alarm within the government and among the more conservative of Uganda’s legal fraternity about the danger the Ssemakadde presidency of the ULS poses.

Uganda’s legal system itself, completely slanted in favour of the NRM state, is now being called into question.

Many Baganda and people from other areas such as northern Uganda are starting to feel that the very land they call their home, square miles of land, has been parcelled out forever.

Nearly every Opposition presidential candidate goes into the general election knowing that no matter how many votes they get on polling day, NRM candidate Yoweri Museveni will be announced the winner.

Every losing petition knows that when it challenges the election result in the Supreme Court, no matter how compelling the evidence of rigging and harassment of supporters they present, the Supreme Court will politely acknowledge the truth of the evidence but blandly conclude that “the evidence is not enough to overturn the result”.

Every mid-ranking to senior army officer knows that were he or she to utter just one of the many inflammatory political statements that the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, regularly utters on social media, they would be court-martialled.

Many young Ugandans are resigned to the fact that no matter how qualified they might be, they will never get certain jobs in the government which appear reserved for only NRM supporters.

These are the realities in Uganda today, written in stone and showing every indication of becoming a permanent, apartheid fact of life.

Masaka MP Mathias Mpuuga made a crucial argument on September 30 on 93.3 KFM when he was hosted via phone by Patrick Kamara.

Museveni’s tenure

Mpuuga pointed out that if the limit on President Museveni’s tenure in office is not restored, a time will come when every single official of state and government will be a Museveni appointee.

Even when Museveni eventually leaves power and a different party from the NRM replaces his government, the new administration will find itself having to work with and within an NRM system.

For all intents and purposes, then, Uganda is now a one-party state and this particular party in power is not exactly a model of even-handedness and good governance.

Thus, Ssemakadde was not under any illusion that his action would go unchallenged by the government and a section of the Uganda Law Society membership.

As I argued on the social media site X/Twitter on October 15, “Ssemakadde's unilateral firing of the Attorney General and Solicitor General from the ULS will be challenged in court. But this seems to be his intention – to trigger a debate on Uganda's current legal climate and rally the public against the political and legal establishment.”

Once the hearing of the case against Ssemakadde begins in court, there will be a frenzied amount of public interest, from the news media to the legal fraternity and the general public.

Given Ssemakadde’s tendency to dramatic gestures and eloquent bombast, it will make highly entertaining and engaging reading and listening both inside and just outside of court.

Those lawyers and government officials accustomed to the law and the Constitution being treated as the formal arbiter of public matters of the day will realise that the Constitution itself and all the political background to it is being called into question by Ssemakadde and team.

The constitutional amendments that have been proposed piecemeal by various Members of Parliament and other interested parties will be overtaken by Ssemakadde’s demand that the entire constitutional order since 1986 be re-examined and overturned.

Law societies such as those in Kenya, Ghana, and other African countries will follow the proceedings with keen interest and weigh in with their view.

This reform agenda, this calling for a radical review of Uganda’s politics and legal framework, this focus on the politics rather than the procedural angles to the law, is what Ssemakadde’s tenure as the head of the Uganda Law Society is all about.

Already, there is intense discussion on social media about Ssemakadde’s action.

Ugandans are not used to senior government officials being dismissed or (to use the Woke term, “cancelled”) this way, even if only symbolically.

The current Attorney General, Kiwanuka Kiryowa, is a partner in a law firm with President Museveni’s son-in-law Edwin Karugire, which is what made Ssemakadde’s dismissal even more notable.

Also, I also noted on X on October 15, “The madness is the method. From his [Ssemakadde’s] viewpoint, the entire legal establishment under the NRM is what Rastafarians term the ‘Babylon System’. So, these crazy decisions are a cunning way to cause a revolution, if not on paper at least in the public's mind.”

As a sign of the current national mood in favour of radical legal changes, the minister of Justice, Mr Norbert Mao – who in theory should be banging the tables that Ssemakadde is currently shaking – posted this on October 16 on Twitter/X:

“In 1990, under my leadership, the Makerere Students Guild General Assembly dismissed Prof Ssenteza Kajubi from the office of vice chancellor. Jacob Oulanyah was the speaker of the Students Guild who presided over the general assembly. Dr Henry Onoria drafted the resolution!”

In this nostalgic post, Mao revealed a certain nostalgia for his better days when he was a true voice of democracy and not what he has been reduced to in 2024, a mere faceless minister in President Museveni’s equally amorphous and faceless Cabinet.

The ramifications of the Ssemakadde presidency will be felt far beyond the precincts of the High Court in Kampala for years to come and its influence will be felt in the lead-up to and aftermath of the 2026 General Election.

Notable.

Ugandans are not used to senior government officials being dismissed or (to use the Woke term, “cancelled”) this way, even if only symbolically. The current Attorney General, Kiwanuka Kiryowa (pictured), is a partner in a law firm with President Museveni’s sonin-law Edwin Karugire, which is what made Ssemakadde’s dismissal even more notable.