WHAT UGANDA NEEDS TO DEVELOP A TRUE DEMOCRACY
A SUCCESS? It is imperative for democracy to prevent exploitation of
vulnerable groups
For the past 15 years Uganda has been experimenting with democracy and, as
can be expected, there have been some mistakes here and there
UGANDA’s walk towards an ideal democracy has been long and difficult. Hon.
Eriya Kategaya looks back at how the NRM lay down important goals and offers
insight into the things that Uganda as a nation will need to reach such a
lofty heights.
DEMOCRACY was one of the original points in the Ten Point Programme of NRM.
When we were still in the bush, we introduced the practice of people electing
and removing their leaders in the areas under our control.
The RC system was born out of necessity and imperatives of the struggle. On
taking over government in January, 1986 the system was expanded to cover the
whole country. This system has been entrenched in our political culture
whether one likes it or not.
The entrenchment of the RC system has been a huge exercise in democratising
the people and the country. At every function in the village, the LC
chairperson has to ceremoniously authorise that function to take place in
his/her village. This is an important ceremony as far as statecraft is
concerned.
In areas where leadership has adhered to the principles of quality cadres,
regardless of one’s political or religious background, some quality
leadership has emerged during the exercise of electing LCs. I am confident
that it is now entrenched in our political culture that leaders at all
levels— from the grass-roots to the top— must be elected. The issue has been
settled in the minds of our people. The question that may be raised is
whether the elections are free and fair. There are some reports that in the
last Parliamentary elections, there was rigging. There is also evidence that
elections have been highly monetised. Those who do not have enough money
stand very slim chances of being elected! I know of some cases where
candidates had to sell their property in order to raise sufficient funds to
‘bribe’ voters by buying soap, meat and even booze. This ‘bribing’ of
voters is a serious challenge to democracy because the voters are not
exercising their unduly influenced will. However, an impression should not be
given that the situation in voting is unmitigated disaster. There have been
many election petitions in courts of law and the verdicts of the courts have
been respected. His Excellency the President had his last election contested
in Court by one of his opponents, Dr. Besigye. This was healthy in terms of
building a culture of the rule of law, which is one of the necessary pillars
for democracy to thrive and be entrenched. The country has moved from the
situation of no elections at all or rigged elections to where there is
election fatigue! The arrangement, as we have now, where people go into
elections for almost four or six months continuously must create fatigue. We
start with presidential elections, then parliamentary elections and finally
LC elections for LC 1 to LC5 chairpersons and councillors. There is need to
revisit these long, expensive and tedious elections. They are expensive to
the candidates and the country. The presidential and parliamentary elections
could be held at the same time by using different ballot papers and ballot
boxes. The argument that most of our voters are illiterate and therefore will
be confused is not born out of evidence from Tanzania and Mozambique. The
elections for the president and parliament in these two countries are held on
the same day and the literacy rate of their population is not higher than in
this country, at least in the case of Mozambique.
Of course democracy does not mean voting only. There are other aspects of
democracy, for example the rule of law; a decent standard of living; freedom
from want of basic necessities of life like adequate food, clean water,
decent shelter, and provision of health services to the population as well as
security of persons and their properties. There are also freedoms which must
be guaranteed under democracy, like freedom of worship, provided this freedom
does not cause insecurity and intolerance. Freedom of _expression_ and other
freedoms are mentioned in chapter four of our 1995 constitution.
The first challenge is this: Do we look at ourselves as one people and one
nation? Forgive me for the _expression_ because it was a cliché at one time.
However, what I mean is this: Do we feel as Ugandans that any infringement of
human rights on any person in Uganda is our collective concern?
When Amin started killing our people from Acholi and Lango, many people in
other parts of the country were not concerned. Amin became a national enemy
when he spread his brutality throughout the country! We need to build
national concern for all our people wherever they may be coming from.
The second challenge to democracy is illiteracy. I have been through
elections and the practice of directing illiterate people on how to vote and
in some case whom to vote is not democratic.
Furthermore, an illiterate person cannot defend rights, which they are not
aware of. In the case of Uganda, the situation is compounded by the fact that
most of the books like the constitution are in a language (English) known and
understood by few people! Most of the official transactions of government are
in English and my experience is that bureaucrats are some of abusers of human
rights in government vis-Ã -vis the ordinary people. I take the denial of
rightful services to the people as denial of democracy because it means that
the government is not answerable to people.
The third challenge to democracy is poverty. If one studies the growth of
democracy in Europe and the USA, one sees a linkage between an expanding
economy and the growth of democracy. Where there were more workers in the
factories, trade unions were formed first to demand for better working
conditions in the factory, but later entered politics to demand
representation in parliament and government. Except for Switzerland, women’s
rights were recognised when the women moved from the kitchen to assembly
lines in factories. The failure to eradicate poverty in Uganda in particular
and Africa in general does not augur well for democracy. The government fails
to meet some of the demands of our people just because it lacks the economic
capacity or capability to do so. Take the example of judicial service
delivery. I have visited prisons in this country and found people who have
been on remand for up to four years. There are many causes for this state of
affairs, but one of the two reasons is slow investigation on the part of the
Police and lack of funds to bring witnesses to court and per diems of the
judges. When funds are available, they are not adequate to cover the expenses
of the Judges and witnesses for a whole court session. We had to ask the
generosity of DANIDA to build us courts in which to try the suspects! The
situation is worrying because when cases take so long, at the end of the day
no conviction is secured and the suspect is acquitted or released after four
years on remand. This is a clear violation of the human rights of the
suspect. There are many examples I could give to show that democracy cannot
thrive amidst poverty. A beggar or a starving person cannot occupy
herself/himself with democratic demands as we generally understand them
because his/her concern is to survive the day!
The fourth challenge to democracy is lack of national consensus on the rules
of the political game. For instance, I have not yet seen a situation where
someone looses an election without claiming that they were rigged. This is
particularly so at national level. There is impatience on the part of most
politicians to achieve immediate results.
My experience is that most politicians take elections as a matter of life and
death. The motive for entering politics in most case is not to serve the
people. There is no cause. There is a general belief that one goes into
politics to make money. In fact, according to our people, a politician is
automatically rich! As a result of these attitudes, there is a strong
tendency and practice to use any means fair or foul to win an election. These
attitudes are dangerous to democracy because those who aspire for leadership
are not patient enough to put up organisations which will outlive them.
Secondly, there are hardly any principles and philosophy, or what is called
ideology in the few political organisations that are with us. As a result of
lack of principles or ideology, the danger of ending up with sectarian
organisations is imminent. This is a challenge we must be aware of and guard
against.
I have dwelt on democracy because where there is democracy, human rights are
guaranteed. The distinction between democracy and human rights is hardly
visible in my opinion.
As stated in my opening remarks, Uganda has been experimenting with democracy
for the last 15 years. The experiment, as all experiments go, has had its
hiccups. That is expected, given the history of brutalisation of our society.
However, there are seeds of democracy which have been planted and what is
required is to nurse and water them so that they grow and flourish? The
taming of the state organs has been going on. The army and the intelligence
agencies have taken on a pro-people character despite some incidents of
indiscipline. These incidents of indiscipline do not reflect a deliberate
policy on the part of state organs. This gives hope for the future of
democracy and observance of human rights.
The freedom of the media has come to stay. The growth of both the press and
electronic media is something we should be proud of. The days when Government
had a monopoly on information are gone. This means that the would-be military
coup detat plotters have a lot of work to do in order to silence all these
radio stations in the country. The days of the Amin taking over Radio Uganda
and announcing his coup are gone because even if one took over Radio Uganda,
not everybody in the country will get the message because not all people
listen to Radio Uganda anymore. Again, this is a seed which creates prospects
for democracy and human rights observance in Uganda. We have been witnessing
politicians, including the President, rushing to explain themselves and their
programmes on these many radio stations. This is accountability by leadership
to the people.
There is another aspect of our democratisation— though controversial but
true— namely the politicisation programmes called mchaka-mchaka. I know that
in some quarters it was called indoctrination, but this is missing the point.
Indoctrination, stripped of its history under Hitler, is a normal method of
moulding character in any society, even in homes. As parents we teach our
children how to behave towards their elders, how to handle eating utensils
and even how to sit! What is more of indoctrination than this! In these
mchaka-mchaka courses there were opportunities to discuss our bad past
together and map out what should be done not to repeat what went wrong in the
past. We formed friendship and comradeship among participants in these
courses, which is still exhibited among the former students. This is a
political bond which is found throughout the country. We should build on this
comradeship to build national politics as opposed to narrow politics.
Lastly, the prospects for democracy and human rights will be enhanced if we
all play by rules and respect our constitution and the institutions in place
for the time being. The best way to enhance democracy is to respect the
Constitution even if it may contain some provisions we do not approve of,
because if the argument is that I can only respect a constitution because it
contains the provisions that I want, then there would not be one constitution
for the whole country. We would have many constitutions for each individual
or group. The last point I would like to make is to distinguish criminality
from political dissent. Political dissent does not mean that I should take a
gun and shoot my opponent. Political dissent does not warrant anybody to
destroy the crops of the opponent because the crops are incapable of taking
part in the debate with your opponent, let alone take part in voting against
you.
Political dissent does not mean burning your opponent’s house and killing his
animals. All these are pure criminal acts and not political dissent. If we
are to build democracy and observe human rights, the above criminal
activities must be condemned by all of us without giving a hint to the
perpetrators of the criminal activities that they are supported.Ends
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