Mr Daniel K. Kalinaki
A combination of inadequate civic education, low citizen agency and plain old poverty ensures that most voters, especially in the rural areas, choose the candidate able to offer them the highest financial reward or promise, not the one with the best ideas.
The process itself remains analogue and prone to logistical mistakes. It is also extremely violent, with law enforcement agencies and the military routinely arresting, brutalising, disappearing or killing people – often those who support the opposition.
Anyone looking for even more flaws can refer to any of the Supreme Court presidential election petition rulings over the past two decades.What you will not find – be it anecdotally or in legal text – is any discomfiture with the idea that individual citizens cast their votes to directly choose their president.
I must admit, a tad snobbishly, that I find it annoying that my vote carries the same weight as that of my farmhand – but this is the equalising basis of democracy.
Fate, a biological lottery and a large dollop of luck might have pushed my boat farther out into the sea of material progress, but it does not make me any more human or deserving to choose who should lead me than it does for the farmhand.
All women and men, equal under the law, is the notion underlying most progressive ideas, including democracy and the rule of law. It is one thing to try and fail to convince the unwashed masses to vote for progressive policies rather than polyester polo shirts. It is another thing, altogether, to assume that they have no agency whatsoever – even to make the wrong electoral choice – and strip them of that right completely.
The idea being floated around, therefore, to have the president elected, not by universal adult suffrage as is currently the case, but by Members of Parliament, is a cunning and dangerous attempt to reverse-engineer our efforts to build a democratic society.
First, as noted, it runs counter to established democratic practice. It seeks, instead, to return us to the feudal days when royalty, nobility, church leaders and the landed gentry made decisions on behalf of the serfs.
Since their material comforts and social standing were built on the backbreaking labour of the serfs who had to be suppressed so that others could tower over them, those decisions were seldom made in the best interests of the serfs. This tree of liberty was irrigated by the blood of many patriots and revolutionaries, here and elsewhere in history, and need not be replanted.
Secondly, even if these historical facts were not self-evident, proposing to usurp this power from citizens and hand it to Members of Parliament, is adding insult to injury. These MPs are elected in the same political pigsty in which presidential candidates wrestle and somersault.
There is nothing to suggest that MPs are elected based on sound policy proposals or manifestos and that they, therefore, are best placed to elect the President.
If anything, our history is replete with examples of MPs acting in their narrow selfish interest and against the wider interests of their constituents. Younger readers might not know that in 2005 MPs were paid Shs5 million each to vote to remove presidential term limits against the hoarse voices of protest from across the country.
The asking price went higher in 2017 during the widely unpopular effort to remove presidential age limits. The vocal resistance was ultimately broken by the deployment of armed commandos inside the parliamentary chamber. These then ensured that the great decision of the day was determined not through logic and persuasion, but through hand-to-hand combat. And you want these guys to choose the President on our behalf? Are you kidding me?
The two biggest reversals in Uganda’s democratic journey arguably – the lifting of the presidential term, and then age limits – were made possible by MPs accepting bribes to vote against the wishes of their constituents.
If this proposal represents the groundswell of public opinion across the country it should be subjected to a referendum, not a parliamentary debate. The monkeys should not decide the fate of the forest.
Incidentally, it just struck me that had term limits not been lifted, we would be preparing to elect at least the third president after Mr Museveni, in 2026.
The reform we need is to return term limits and guarantee the country new leadership every 10 years. The proposal to hand that power to MPs is a solution looking for a non-existent problem.
Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.
[email protected];
X: @Kalinaki
