The
parliament appointments committee has approved a military General, Aronda
Nyakairima to become internal affairs minister. It wasn't much of a surprise to
some of us who have been around long enough to see exactly how the invisible or
sometimes very visible hand of president Museveni works in the August House.
Initially I had predicted that the speaker will conveniently abscond from
parliament and then the deputy speaker who is not very secretive about his
support for whatever the president wants, will just chair the committee and get
Aronda approved since that’s what the president wanted. Well, it seems to me
like I had overestimated the speaker’s resolve to protect and uphold the
constitution.
The
path that this parliament is leading Uganda to is regrettable and very
undemocratic. Parliament is officially an appendage of the executive. There is
absolutely no flicker of independence in the three arms of government of Uganda
like it should be. The multi-party dispensation where the ruling party sets the
agenda and the other parties follow suit is not helping Uganda as well.
Opposition parties and leaders who wait for the president to do something and
then they react do not help our pursuit for democracy and rule of law.
Parliament
by approving Gen Aronda to participate in partisan politics has set a very
dangerous precedent. Aronda will be partisan because as a Cabinet minister, he
will be fostering and implementing the manifesto of NRM.
It is even unbelievable that though a
precedent had already been set, in the matter of Jeje Odong who had to retire
from the army first before he could be approved as minister; parliament has
again gone against its initial position to satisfy the desires of the
president. That simply means that what gets passed in parliament and what fails
are simply dependent on what the president wants. In this case, the president
wanted Aronda to be both a serving military General and a Cabinet minister. And
he got exactly that. Whether it respects the supreme law of the land doesn’t
matter as long as it serves his interests of self-preservation. When the president
said that very few Members of parliament can survive without his help, they
rushed to defend themselves. Now we can see it in the works. Without his under-the-table
payments or even sometimes openly on their accounts, they cannot indeed survive
in their luxurious lifestyles full of debts. And it is exactly this parasitic
behaviour that exposes them to shame when matters of upholding constitutionalism,
as is their sworn mandate, contradict with the presidents wishes.
Parliamentarians need to
understand that the constitution itself is just like any other book if we do
not uphold the very important culture of constitutionalism in this country. The
way having elections every few years does not mean democracy is the same way
having a constitution does not guarantee rule of law. In Uganda, elections are rigged, the
judiciary manipulated and opposition activists clobbered to the extent of
fighting for their lives in a bid to stop them from exercising their rights.
But somehow, we still consider ourselves a democracy. The police who are supposed
to be a civilian force and protector of the people are headed by military men
who have no culture of handling people but fully understand following orders as
is in the military.
Rule of law is steadily
being eroded and that has set us on path to tyranny and military rule. How can parliament that is supposed to be
independent consult the head of the executive on a constitutional issue? It has
become common place to see parliamentarians being called to state house and
having them to approve policies that are in clear contravention with the
constitution. One wonders when the president became an expert in interpreting
the constitution. Then why do we need a parliament of 375 members when one
person can make laws, pass them and execute them?
The approval of Gen
Aronda by parliament as a cabinet minister opens up the constitutional space
for the possibility of the president proposing that the Speaker of the house should
be a military general since we already have the army members in parliament and
they vote for the ruling NRM when the
army is supposed to be non-partisan. We
have already seen the president meddle with the judiciary throwing in a carrot
here and there. And he is about to militarise parliament which is probably the
only remaining organ with its hand up.
When that happens as our
parliamentarians are letting it gradually, Uganda can officially bid farewell
to any sort of constitutionalism.
“Successful
states are run on the basis of consent not conquest. “ – Prof. Mahmood Mamdani
By Pathias Klinn Akabanjuna
The writer is a socio-political commentator and Blogger
BSc. Quantity Surveying
Twitter: @PathyKlinn
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