My area MP, please show cause why our taxes should continue paying your salary

The passage of the Public Order Management Bill by the ninth parliament has killed the hitherto remaining semblance of constitutionalism and democracy that in Uganda. I have watched on Television and read in papers Uganda’s premier John Patrick Amama Mbabazi call opposition MPs who openly decried the passage of the bill as wild beasts who should have known that in a democracy, the majority takes the lead. I am now fully convinced that our rulers (read misrulers) either don’t understand what democracy means or deliberately want to dupe us that democracy means mob rule. It doesn’t call for an expert in political science to comprehend that while democracy entails majority rule, minority interests and rights cannot be overridden.

We never gave MPs a licence to gag us and deprive us of our God-given rights. We voted them to be a voice of the voiceless not to use and misuse the law to suppress dissent. We voted Members of Parliament to uphold the constitution and not to abuse it. We never voted MPs to legalise dictatorship. With the passage of the public order management bill, we now have parliamentary mobocracy, dictatorship, oppression, repression and suppression made legal!

We cannot for heaven’s sake obey a law that empowers the partisan police to grant or deny permission to anyone intending to hold a meeting to discuss issues of public concern. The law will inevitably burry the opposition political parties and critical civil society organizations. It will bury all our constitutional and God-given rights.   I have often implored Ugandans of goodwill to read Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to understand what he says about just and unjust laws. 

With this law in place, even people in taxis fear talking politics, people from my home area Bitereko and Kanyabwanga cannot complain about absence of drugs in their health centre IIIs, unemployed graduates will not air their grievances, the police officers’ wives will not protest the wretched conditions they,  their husbands and children are subjected to; security guards whose money is deducted but never remitted to NSSF will never organize to raise these issues; I will not be allowed to host Norbert Mao for my function in Ruhinda; teachers, medical workers and university lecturers  will not sit to demand a pay raise; traders will not talk about tax injustice but most importantly all of us will be disenfranchised. Clearly, this one is a law that we must all defy. Personally, I am ready to die in jail than live in a society where I am legally (of course not legitimately) deprived of all my rights, all my liberties and all my freedoms. I am not ready to live in a country that dehumanizes me. I am not ready to live in a country where I depend on someone’s discretion to exercise or not to exercise my rights.  Even if the penalty for defiance of such a law was death, I would gladly accept it. And I must state that I will plead guilty if I am charged with contravention of the soon to be Public Order Management Act. I am not ready to live in Uganda as a subject for I know I am a citizen.

I am currently organizing protests over several issues and I must confess for selfish reasons. These include but are not limited to; the sick healthcare system that can’t cure my ailing mother; exorbitant fees in private universities which in 2009 were hiked by 126 percent leading to my relatives dropping out of school; the miserable pay and wretched living conditions to which my paternal uncle is subjected to;  the huge sums of money for VIP treatment which renders me less human; the employment of mediocre “graduates” in public bodies that have rendered us redundant and a parliament that passes obnoxious and poisonous laws. I would expect my area MP to show cause why we should continue paying him. I will be glad if all of us selfishly opposed injustice since selflessness no longer makes sense to the majority. The sum total of selfish opposition to injustice is the highest level of patriotism.

The writer is a human rights defender

vnuwagaba@gmaqil.com

The Public Order Management law is morally repugnant and a call to anarchy

Vincent Nuwagaba

In 2003, James Kakooza, Member of Parliament representing Kabula county was the fanatical architect of what some Ugandans called the “third term” campaign for Museveni although some others called it a sad term which my lecturer for constitutionalism, diplomacy and international law Philip KasaijaApuuli preferred to call a lugubrious term. Kakooza printed T-shirts with the label MMM which he opportunistically described as Museveni, Movement and Me. It now appears, we are now in the era of MMM for virtually all NRM MPs. I have christened August 6, “Black Tuesday” and I call upon all Ugandans and lovers of Uganda to mark it as a day of mourning. Every first Tuesday in the month of August should henceforth be set aside for remembering the day when our NRM Members of Parliament tied a rope in the citizens' necks. On this particular day, MPs legally but illegitimately tied a rope in our a rope in our necks, gave a green light to the often partisan police to pull the rope thereby strangling us and allowed the courts the courts to bury us. We should cry very loud so that good Samaritans can come and save us.

The passage of the bill and the subsequent silence of the population as though nothing happened is a function of a very weak civil society. We have an elitist civil society with NGOs standing at the top of its strata. Trade Unions are hardly heard, Faith Based Organisations have largely preoccupied themselves with giving charity; students unions are almost inexistent and if at all they do exist they are totally silent. The national youths council is under the armpit of the NRM and so is the Pan African Movement and the trade unions. The unemployed graduates are not organised and issues of public concern have been left to the NRM parliamentarians whose motto is MMM which stands for Museveni, Movement and Me. This implies all NRM MPs think about is Museveni, their party and themselves. Cry beloved pearl of Africa!

I am convinced that with more than 10,000 NGOs, a plethora of Community Based Organisations (CBOs), so many Faith Based Organizations (FBOs), more than 40 trade unions, Ugandans should ask, “how come, only a few voices from key NGO workers are heard condemning the passage of the draconian bill?”. And I must applaud those who publicly condemned the passage of the bill. Foundation for Human Rights Initiative's Livingstone Sewanyana, Centre for Constitutional Governance, Human Rights Network and Bishop ZacNiringiye among others. Nevertheless, the voices are still too few to be heard loud and clear. My conviction is that we need a value-for-money audit of Uganda's CSOs.

Makerere University don MwambusyaNdebesa believes that we have not yet evolved into civil society because we largely hear NGOs speak for the citizens but without them. His argument is that civil society should organically grow from the grassroots but what we have is a mechanically developed (my words) civil society whose foundation are the NGOs that are formed from the top by the elites.

I implore members who passed the bill to read DrMuniiniMulera's article titled “Public Order Management Bill will consume its midwives” to see how Basil Bataringaya, the once Obote 1's powerful interior minister enginereed the enactment of State of emergence laws which were later to be used to incarcerate him. Accordingly, our dear parliamentarians have made themselves a three cord string that will be used to hang them. I wouldn't mind so much if they were the only ones to be affected  since my grandfather ShwenkuruFabianoBifabusha used to tell me, “oyeyitsiretacuriirwa” meaning people don't mourn a person that commits suicide. I only pity us the innocent and the children of the members that passed the obnoxious bill.

President Museveni may not be a victim of this imminent bad law but certainly MPs will fall victim to it. Time never lies. Certainly also, some if not of his children and grandchildren will fall victim to the bad law. I am passionately opposed to the bill not because I hate its architects and those who passed it. I oppose it not because I hate YoweriMuseveni, AmamaMbabazi or my area Member of Parliament General KahindaOtafiire. I am opposed to it not because I hate IGP Gen Kale Kayihura or my brother Frank Tumwebaze minister for the presidency. I surely love these people unconditionally partly because God is love but also they are personally known to me and some related to me. I oppose all unjust laws because I fervently love justice. I definitely abhor much of what these people do but I still love them.

I do not know how many shouted Aye in support of the bill but I know they are a tiny minority compared to the 30 million plus who strongly oppose it. I saw PremierAmamaMbabazi label the opposition Members of Parliament wild animals and I was baffled. When he argued that the majority had supported the bill I became even more confused. Does he know how many people are going to live in bondage by being forced to be subservient to this soon-to-be law awaiting presidential assent? Did MrMbabazi read the works of John Locke while at Makerere's law school?

I read Frank Tumwebaze's article in the New Vision of Tuesday 14, August and I couldn't decipher what he meant. At least, minister Tumwebaze knows that we fairly understand the English language. He is telling us to petition the courts of law when our activities have already been blocked by the police! Is the law aimed at keeping the opposition in courts of law thereby curtailing their activities? This particular law is worse than the 1995 constitutional provisions that banned political party activities.

We must, nevertheless, defy it and readily and willingly accept any penalty. Personally, I will not accept to be disenfranchised, dehumanised and oppressed by a law passed by below the average Members of Parliament whose actions point to the dearth of the capacity to foretell the ramifications of the laws they enact. If I am ever to have charges proffered against me emanating from this imminent law, I will not enter plea of not guilty. If opposing injustice is a crime, I will gladly accept to be convicted and I will not enter mitigation to pray for a lenient sentence. With public universities being inaccessible to the poor; with the total collapse of the health-care system; with the dearth if not death of justice in our judicial system, I am ready to lose everything dear and near to me in the line of duty.

If it takes shedding my blood to water the tree of freedom, so be it. I will live in my country as a citizen not a subject. I will not hand the key to the door of my freedoms and rights to the police. The law awaiting presidential assent is politically imprudent, morally repugnant and an invitation to anarchy. It is anarchy made legal and its defiance by all well-meaning citizens brooks no delay.

MrNuwagaba is a human rights scholar and defender.

vnuwagaba@gmail.com

+256702843552