Prime
Cats and milk, Russians and Vodka, and why Museveni will remain president
Any half-decent teenager in my village secondary school, after reading the preamble to the Constitution, will explain in detail why they think the Supreme Court made a horrible mistake in allowing President Museveni to run in 2021.
But it is us the old timers who will explain what it is that the learned justices were probably thinking.
On June 25, 2004, the Constitutional Court (justices Galdino Okello, Alice Mpagi Bahigeine, George Engwau, Amos Twinomujuni and Christine Kitumba) behaved like the proverbial fly that had no one to advise it and it, therefore, followed the corpse into the grave.
They had ill-advisedly and mistakenly laboured under the illusion that there is such a thing as an independent Judiciary in Uganda. So they ruled that Dr Paul Ssemogerere was right: the referendum on political systems was illegal and, therefore, everything done under it was illegal, since the referendum law had been passed without quorum.
Even in malwa groups in my village, a decision passed without requisite quorum is illegal; everyone knows that. Actually it hadn’t been a difficult case to handle, even though several government bigwigs – including an otherwise reputable prime minister (bless his soul) – had lied under oath that Parliament had been seized of the requisite quorum.
The President immediately went on national radio and television, banged tables and blasted the judges, rubbishing them; reminding them that had it been in the days of Idi Amin, such judges would have been killed – hey, why don’t you just google that speech!!
Mobs were organised to demonstrate against the Judiciary, accusing them of usurping the power of the people. The President directed that an appeal be filed, so it was no surprise the Supreme Court saved the day.
On Thursday, January 14, Uganda goes to the polls in what should go down in the record books as the most disorganised and the most violent election in Uganda’s history.
Former Electoral Commission chairman, Dr Badru Kiggundu, who was always accused of incompetence and cheating for Mr Museveni, must be dying of laughter!
For the record, it must be said that the 1980 election, which was the purported basis for Mr Museveni to wage a war, citing fraud, violence and a fundamental breach of democratic ideals, was too nice, fair, smooth and civilised to be compared to what we have witnessed in the last few weeks.
The incumbent, who knows that he is facing perhaps the strongest challenge he’s faced in recent times, has raised the bar in playing crook.
State resources have been deployed – this time in broad daylight, to facilitate his campaign.
We have seen deployment of the military and police to intimidate and harass, to the point of shooting to kill. Detention of opponents and their crew, complete disruption of opponents’ campaigns and ensuring that the playing ground favours only himself, is a lot of evil, yet that’s not all.
The process has, therefore, already been rigged and what is sure to follow is rigging of the vote itself. Like we’ve seen before, there will be districts where everyone votes, including the sick and the dead – and they all vote the incumbent; and polling stations where the incumbent gets more votes than the total number of voters.
And there will be results that will change miraculously, on their way from the polling stations. These are signs of a man desperate to stay in power at all costs.
The 2004 incident gave us a premonition of what happens when decisions do not go Mr Museveni’s way.
Let us go to the polls on January 14. Let us vote Mr Museveni out. But let us also know that it will be a merely symbolic victory; because cats will stop taking milk, Russians will stop drinking Vodka and the Germans will stop drinking beer before Mr Museveni accepts that the people have rejected him.
Mr Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda
