CHANGE AGENDA
The death in Arua of a 26 years old Yasin Kawuma, a driver to Kyadondo East MP, Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi, (aka Bobi Wine), subsequent detention of the Arua Municipality by-election candidate and hordes of his supporters cast a shameful light for those who validate the Museveni-type legal tyranny.
Ugandans should wake up to realize that democracy is meaningless in Uganda and Museveni will never let up through the ballot. Frequent rigged elections on its own, does not imply democracy. Democracy thrives alongside respect for human rights, constitutionalism, rule of law, and independent institutions such as the media, Judiciary, Legislature and rule of law.
What we have in Uganda is an eviscerated version of democracy deprived of all its supportive institutions, militarised and lethal - In Bugiri a youth lost a life and now in Arua. The relevance of democracy in a liberal society is to promote free thinking and reaffirm social and political rights of individuals. The state should guarantee and not abrogate these rights. Mr. Museveni has ably duped his foreign backers - USA, UK, EU to believe in a sham democratic credential. Uganda has regressed from the ideals of a liberal society with liberal rights. To a greater extent, Mr. Museveni has succeeded in creating his counterfeit version of each and every attribute of democracy by adopting a veneer of its main components, while exenterating out substance.
In practice, the regime subverts democracy using legal means to sustain a legal tyranny. All their duplicitous policies are channeled through the legislative process and approved by the Court systems for legitimacy. To an outsider, these processes appear all perfect and democratic, from inside, these systems and processes are grossly flawed and ignoble.
The most abused is the concept of people's power which is also recognized and symbolized in the 1995 NRM Constitution. In that document, which has since been abrogated as deemed, the people of Uganda have arbitrary power, and are allowed to exercise it as they wish. That provision ends there in theory. In practice, Ugandans are some of the most dis-empowered lot world-over. They have no control over the exercise of their social rights as citizens. If elections allows the exercising of this power, then the routine vote rigging, and doctoring election outcomes by a tightly controlled, impartial and appointed cadres in Electoral Commission denies people of this exercise.
The institutions that arise out of this sham electoral processes also lack legitimacy to serve a function. Under the NRM, the legislature and Judiciary serve a functionality rather than a function. A judge performs a function when s/he dispenses justice as per the laws and authority derived from the constitution under the doctrine of separation of power. The Judiciary does not perform the function for which they are qualified for as Judges of the various courts the moment their judgement are swayed by political gerrymandering to legitimize the tyranny of the regime.
The media on the other hand is bullied, bought-off or subdued to the point of self-censor, thus compromising scrutiny and accountability. In all these narrowing public space, Mr. Museveni has eroded and diminished the values of democracy to a level that he is has seamlessly fused himself with the state, and is the state. Soon, Mr. Museveni will ban elections, Parliament and Judiciary like Amin, and his western backers will offer him a red carpet still. Every action Mr. Museveni takes now subverts democratic institutions, thus producing leaders with dubious democratic credentials, highly corrupted and unpatriotic.
To know that Ugandans are powerless, any attempts to criticise the regime is matched with excessive force, detentions, torture, annihilation, unreasonable taxes, endless legal battles, and grabbing their land. Discrimination from public service and resources are used as political weapons to silence dissent.
Ugandans are so fed up with Museveni that they are disoriented and now feud over strategies to remove the regime, and when!
END
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