Today, sometimes it is difficult to know who truly governs Uganda -President Museveni and the First Son, Gen Muhoozi Kenyarugaba, are respectively in command of State responsibilities. It is good to note that Gen Muhoozi has a phobia for corruption, save that he seems to be forgetting that his political directives lack the force of law of Parliament and are, therefore, in open defiance of Articles 79 (2) and 208 (2) of the Constitution. Ugandans cannot forget the significance of President Museveni’s Luweero Triangular war waged 40 years ago to put an end to omnipotent dictatorship in the country, save that the good days are yet to come.
Unlike many a dictator in Africa, Gen Museveni belongs to a breed of Socialist intellectuals who can very easily confuse the population through the advocacy of patriotism and social economic transformation, and his book on ‘the Mustard Seed,’ says it all. Behind Museveni now is the rampant failure to ensure the existence of constitutional governance, which he vowed to protect at all times when he went to the bush. The government programme is beginning to slide back to where we were when Museveni last commanded the 27 gallant men to invade Kabamba. What is happening in government is very far from what people expected.
There is little to show that the President is ruling us in accordance with what he promised when he came to power in 1986. The 1995 Constitution is gradually collapsing. Metro FM radio, recently played back the recorded speech of [former president] Apolo Milton Obote in Mbale, Bugisu during his 2nd presidential term of office where he openly admitted that federal governance among the regions of Uganda, at Independence, was reached through consensus. He however, added that when he saw the late Sir Edward Muteesa beginning to dominate Uganda’s political scene, he was forced to throw him out of office for fear of what was about to happen.
That is an open admission that Obote had no sound reasons for obliterating the Federal Constitution under which the Uganda nation was founded. It is on record that when the late Daudi Ochieng moved an impeachment motion on the floor of the National Assembly, mentioning the involvement of then prime minister Obote and his henchmen, in the Congo gold/ivory scandal, he could not wait for that motion to be debated. He summoned the legislators for an emergency sitting and declared the 1962 Constitution abolished by telling them to find the new Constitution in their respective pigeon-holes. As if that was not enough, Obote framed the infamous court case of Uganda Vs Commissioner of Prisons ex-parte Matovu (1966) where his Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acted as a State witness to boost the prosecution side.
The people of Uganda have never recovered from that turbulent shock up to now. The report of Justice Odoki’s Constitutional Review Commission in the 1990s, revealed that a federal system of government was still popular among the people of Uganda, as opposed to what the Constituent Assembly that later side-lined the Federal factor. The Constituent Assembly, however, laid a lot of emphasis on the sovereignty of the people of Uganda under Article 1 of the Constitution and the democratic principles in the national objectives and directives of State policy. The failure of the NRM government to re-instate federal governance, arbitrarily banished by Obote in 1966, is the main source of social, political and economic stagnation prevailing in the country today.
Since the banning of the federal basic law, Ugandans have never seen the political light of day. That power belongs to the people as stated under Article 1 of the Constitution, cannot alone guarantee the permanent ‘existence of people’s right to self-determination’. The general elections through which that can be enforced, are not free and fair and its products may not be necessarily empowered. There is, therefore, an urgent need to amend Article 178 of the Constitution on regional governance to address its current deficiencies. In the event that nothing happens, our bid in search of liberation to regain federal independence through the international Court of Justice in the Hague, should not be ruled out.