Dear Mr Sseppuuya,*Re: Lawyers, lawyers everywhere. It is the rule of law, or is it?*
*It is sad that East Africa, following the colonial masters, has all those incompetent lawyers in charge of our destiny. In our time there used to be streaming in schools. The best students, generally went into Science subjects and the second rate into Arts. Look at the likes of Peter Kabatsi, Sam Kuteesa, Elly Karuhanga, VP Ssekandi, Nuwa Amanya-Mushega, the late Omwony Ojok, Justice Ralph Ochan and all of those lawyers. None of them studied Maths/Numeracy beyond Senior Two. **Can you imagine it is these that negotiate contracts about the Oil fields? Yes fellows who got zero in Maths in S.2 at Budo are now in charge. Monsanto takes over the seed stock of East Africa after negotiating with guys who went to law school because they had some good grade in Religious studies or Shakespearean Literature or something of the sort. I once had a communication with the Dean of the Law Faculty at Makerere. He wrote to me that Science or Maths have nothing to do with Law. That Scientists here go to law school to avoid unemployment !!!* * In the West Law School is some kind of Graduate School (called post-graduate in Uganda). Here, after Engineering School many go to Law School. After an undergraduate in Molecular and or Cell Biology one goes to Law school. It is such calibre of scholars that eventually found pharmaceutical and chemical industries, become the heads of Industry, or join** Government to write the Law** to protect citizens**, or work on patents**. Some of our lawyers have never had a class in basic science. Senior two Biology is just not good enough. The fraud here in the West is that the leaders in society are mostly clergy and lawyers. In China before 1945 Chairman Mao was a librarian. But the others -- Prime Minister Chu-en-Lai, General Lin Piao etc... were all engineers. Their Cabinets are mostly scientists and engineers. How do the lawyers - Obama and gang, compare with the Chinese in infrastructure building? Take the three Gorges Dam, Super highways, Bullet trains etc..... America's Amtrak is a sick joke. What are your views on this issue? My other beef is that Three-year degrees ought to be phased out in Uganda. Let us have only four-year degrees. Mitayo Potosi. ==================================* *Re: Lawyers, lawyers everywhere. It is the rule of law, or is it?* Posted Tuesday, July 26 2011 at 00:00 Share This Story Share<http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.monitor.co.ug%2FOpEd%2FCommentary%2F-%2F689364%2F1207614%2F-%2F12t908cz%2F-%2Findex.html&t=Daily%20Monitor%3A%20%C2%A0-%20Commentary%C2%A0%7CLawyers%2C%20lawyers%20everywhere.%20It%20is%20the%20rule%20of%20law%2C%20or%20is%20it%3F&src=sp> Full disclosure: For my undergraduate studies, I wanted to pursue law, having determined as a child that I would be a lawyer. I discounted the rather simplistic yet simple opinion that I had overheard my mother telling her sister, when I was 8 or 9 years old, that “lawyers are the people who say a thief did not steal”. When the time came I did apply, but Makerere Law School did not take me as I did not score the requisite marks at A-Level. I was therefore left to admire from the sidelines as many schoolmates made it into Law School. Many are now sound lawyers, magistrates and judges. It was during university time also that the broader rule of law was restored when the NRA swept to power, banishing state-inspired terror, re-establishing courts of law, and the revamping of the Uganda Law Society. The superstructure was rebuilt. But what is happening within the superstructure? One of the small benefits of travelling is the opportunity to see how things work elsewhere, or how they do not work in your country. A sojourn across the Malaba border point will instantly reveal that Kenya actually respects road reserves. They do not build in them the way Ugandans do. There is a by-law of preserving road reserves, and one suspects that Kenya’s road reserves by-law is the same as Uganda’s. This is only one of the many contraventions of law/statute/guideline that Ugandans happily live with. A few others: * Traffic laws: One-way streets, traffic lights, shoulders, speed limits, overtaking, helmets, seatbelts, talking on phone, drink-driving, tinted windows, motorcycle passenger limits *Construction: Many by-laws governing building are ignored * Copyright: TV stations and film halls translate wantonly; publications and music stations pirate *Registration of births/deaths: Births should be in 3 months, deaths in 1 month *Littering *Firearms *First-come, first-served (not law, but good behaviour) *Noise: Discos and churches *Prevention of Cruelty to Animals: Overloading of cows on trucks, chicken on bicycles and buses *Registration of places of worship; marrying in a registered place *Rabies Act: Police have power to seize, detain or destroy stray animals *Smoking in public places *Enguli Act: Nobody shall manufacture enguli without licence; no person shall consume. It is not exactly the Wild West, but neither is it Shangri-La. Whichever way we could really do better. After all, we have so many well qualified lawyers. Many of the recent key appointments are legal minds: Edward Sekandi in the Vice Presidency, Amama Mbabazi as Prime Minister, Rebecca Kadaga as Speaker of Parliament, with another lawyer, Jacob Oulanyah as her deputy. The two big wigs at City Hall, Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago and executive director Jennifer Musisi are both lawyers, as is their newly-found nemesis, intelligence supremo Gen. David Tinyefuza, who holds a Masters degree in Human Rights. Makerere enrols 300 undergraduates into its Law School every year, while Uganda Christian University passed out 213 law graduates last year and 229 in 2009. It is raining lawyers. So why is it that with all these legal minds, we are a society less inclined to obey and enforce what is lawful? Perhaps the Musisi/Lukwago versus Tinyefuza standoff is instructive. The KCCA boss is holding onto the legal – the house under contest lawfully belongs to the city authorities. There was never a proper (lawful) transfer of the property to the security forces; the land title is at City Hall. On the General’s side, there is a flouting of what is lawful. This small matter is just one of many the new administration at City Hall is going to have to deal with to establish true rule of law, because impunity in Uganda trickles all the way down from the high and mighty to the supposedly upright me and you. What is particularly alarming is the wanton disregard of the law by lawyers themselves. Small time lawyers are also making hay. In the wake of post-election petitions is a long trail of double-dealing by lawyers. By law, any petition contesting election of an MP must be accompanied by an affidavit, and affidavits are administered by lawyers. This is being abused. The Law Society is going to receive an entreaty pointing out that certain lawyers have been swearing affidavits with one witness, then turning around and administering an affidavit with the same witness for the client’s opponent, nullifying the previous one. They are telling lies; they are abusing affidavits – it is the moral equivalent of a priest marrying a lady to one man, then turning around and marrying the same woman to her former boyfriend. It is prostitution. We are admittedly a laissez faire society; we do not pay too much attention to order. We like a bit of jungle law. It is kama mbaya mbaya (come what may). There is a joy, even some fun, to it, but also a price to pay. It does breed a wrong culture – impunity – and costs us future discipline. It is on scrupulous obedience of the law that a society builds a civilisation. Let’s produce more lawyers, but let us also apply and obey the law. dsseppu...@ug.nationmedia.com
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