The Constitution vests the Uganda Police Force (UPF) with a clear mandate: to preserve law and order. The Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF), by contrast, safeguard territorial integrity.
Yet in practice, ‘order’ has been elevated above ‘law,’ and security agencies increasingly treat constitutional rights as optional. The law never grants them that luxury. Their duty is to maintain order within the law – not to suspend rights in the name of orderliness.
Consider a simple dilemma. If a citizen wishes to peacefully march against corruption and briefly stand before Parliament, must the police arrest them because vehicles use the same road, or traders operate nearby? Does traffic convenience or commercial comfort override a fundamental right to assemble and express oneself? The answer should be obvious: all rights must be balanced, not traded off.
The role of the police is to regulate competing claims – not extinguish one for the comfort of another. Citizens fund the State precisely so that their rights can coexist. Yet Ugandans know the familiar refrain: ‘Your rights are valid, but you will disturb traffic.’
This justification was deployed during the 2024 #March2Parliament protest and has been repeated for decades for Opposition rallies. Instead of enabling peaceful assemblies, security agencies default to banning them.
Teargas becomes a logistics tool; batons become traffic officers.This concern for ‘public order’ is profoundly selective. State-aligned events – presidential anti-corruption walks, Chief of Defence Forces Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s birthday parades, marathons, concerts, charity events – enjoy seamless police cooperation. But when citizens gather for accountability, justice, or Opposition politics, suddenly the streets are ‘too fragile’ for crowds.
This is not policing; it is political filtration. Courts across the Commonwealth have rejected this logic. In Muwanga Kivumbi v. Attorney General (Uganda, 2008), the Constitutional Court struck down police powers to prohibit assemblies, emphasising that regulation is permissible, but prior restraint is not. Similarly, in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (India, 2020), the Supreme Court held that restrictions on fundamental freedoms must be lawful, necessary, and proportionate – not based on administrative convenience or speculative disruption.
The danger has grown sharper in the current election cycle. Security organs now increasingly speak before and even over the Electoral Commission. Police and UPDF have issued directives on campaign conduct, warned citizens against staying near polling stations, and condemned political slogans such as the NUP’s ‘protest vote.’ Yet no law – not the Constitution, not the Electoral Commission Act, not the Presidential Elections Act – grants security agencies authority to police political speech.
Their task is singular: maintain peace as the law provides. When armed institutions define what is permissible in elections, the Electoral Commission becomes an observer, and citizens become subjects to be managed rather than rights-holders to be respected.
Uganda can survive noisy streets, passionate crowds, and heated political expression. What it cannot survive is a State where ‘order’ is weaponised against the very rights the law protects.
To preserve law and order must mean both – for a country that protects order but ignores law is not stable. It is merely controlled.