Rogers Magala
The world of politics is a theatre full of surprises – even for the most experienced actors. Who would have anticipated a fallout between Kenyan President William Ruto and his impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua two years after their hard-earned victory during the 2022 Kenya presidential election?
Similarly, back home in the leading Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP), the party president Robert Kyagulanyi and former deputy president for Buganda region Mathias Mpuuga no longer see eye to eye over matters on political governance within the echelons of NUP and in the pursuit of political power at national level.
The NUP-Mpuuga debacle has since metamorphosed into a morality-against-the-law riddle to which each party has zealously taken sides. It has contemporarily reincarnated the Hart-Fuller debate on law and morality, one of the most fascinating scholarly discussions of all time.
Prof Hart argued that the law should be followed as it is written in the statutes, independent from any external influence attempting to determine what it ought to be.
Whereas, Prof Fuller rebutted that the law should have an essence of morality and ethics without entirely being founded on statutes which protects society from morally bad law.
Prof Fuller argued that legislation must pass a moral test before it can be considered as law in the genuine sense. This has similarly been the position of NUP on the ‘service award’ to its former deputy president. NUP has held Mpuuga accountable on moral grounds and asked him to return the money (service award) because it violates the values of the party.
In August, the High Court (Civil Division) declared the ‘service award’ to Mpuuga and the three commissioners lawful, for it was approved by Parliament and formed part of the budget presented by the Executive.
Mpuuga oughts to take cognizance of the natural law principle, lex iniusta non est lex-an, unjust law is no law at all.
Therefore, celebrating the High Court’s ruling was uncalculated and it only justified that he was not penitential and saw no wrong being party to proceedings that awarded him and company Shs1.7 billion at the base of a struggling economy and thousands of Ugandans deprived of social service delivery.
Just recently, the Internet was awash with the altruism of a British national who built a state-of-the-art 64-bed orthopedic ward at Jinja Referral Hospital at a cost of £300,000 (Shs1,4b) in just seven months. Legislators like Mpuuga should cease being self-centered and advocate for the social welfare of the people they lead instead of using the law as a pipe to siphon from national coffers.
While responding to the Shs40m scandal, specifically to Member of Parliament, Twaha Kagabo, Mpuuga said he had no regrets in reprimanding and holding in contempt colleagues who could not ‘smell the coffee’ to realise that they were being driven into a ditch from which they would never recover permanently.
It is unfortunate that Mpuuga and NUP are trapped in a prisoner’s dilemma just one year away from the 2026 General Election. The prisoner’s dilemma is a game theory which tasks two prisoners to cooperate and conceal a secret in order to serve a lesser punishment or, one prisoner squeals in order to serve a lesser punishment at the expense of the other prisoner.
This stalemate has since been escalated by the sense of entitlement and individualism from either side, which can only be cured by a breakaway. While appearing on Sanyuka television recently, NUP spokesperson Waiswa Mufumbiro said Mpuuga was ‘finito’, an Italian word to mean finished.
The rosy relationship that the two enjoyed before can no longer be recovered in as much as it’s truly said that in politics, shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships. However, this cannot be the case in the NUP-Mpuuga rivalry.
It will only add salt to the sore foot if Mpuuga does not quit NUP soon enough because he has lost fidelity within the party, he can no longer influence decisions or control thought amongst NUP party members.
He may consider following the same path trodden by former prime minister Amama Mbabazi who fell out with NRM and created 'Go Forward, a pressure group or seek refuge in the DP-block or the new splinter EFF based at Katonga.
Rodgers Magala is a law student.
