Dr Kizza Besigye surrounded by armed police at his home in Kasangati. PHOTO | ABUBAKER LUBOWA
By Julius Barigaba and Gaaki Kigambo
- Since election day, the four-time presidential challenger has been held prisoner in his house, which he has insisted made it extremely difficult for him to prepare a robust petition over the poll outcome.
- His continued detention, a prominent human-rights activist noted, is certain to overshadow the Supreme Court’s verdict, being as it is that it does not significantly differ from the previous two in 2006 and 2001 when Besigye was the main petitioner.
Even though Uganda’s Supreme Court ruled on Thursday March 31, to uphold the outcome of the February 18 presidential election, the elephant in the room remains the unresolved question of Dr Kizza Besigye’s contested detention and the aspirations of his supporters across the country.
On March 1, former prime minister Amama Mbabazi requested the Supreme Court to declare that longtime President Yoweri Museveni, the ruling National Resistance Movement party candidate in the recent election, was not validly elected, and that the election should be annulled.
But the evidence and arguments presented by Mbabazi’s lawyers in court, hardly addressed the plight of Mr Besigye, who came second with 35.61 per cent of the vote, according to the EC results. Besigye and his Forum for Democratic Change, Uganda’s largest political party, roundly rejected the results.
Since election day, the four-time presidential challenger has been held prisoner in his house, which he has insisted made it extremely difficult for him to prepare a robust petition over the poll outcome.
His continued detention, a prominent human-rights activist noted, is certain to overshadow the Supreme Court’s verdict, being as it is that it does not significantly differ from the previous two in 2006 and 2001 when Besigye was the main petitioner.
On March 21, the Kasangati Magistrate’s Court, which was set to determine the legality of Besigye’s continued house arrest, was ordered by the High Court to transfer the file to it.
Ten days later, neither the revision the Directorate of Public Prosecution requested no the allocation of the file to a judge, or better yet its return to the magistrate, has happened — fuelling speculation of political interference in the case.
As a four-time challenger to President Museveni’s grip on power, Besigye has since 2001 become a factor that cannot be wished away, and what has been interpreted as deliberate action by the regime to keep the FDC candidate under lockdown to thwart his efforts to challenge the election outcome, presents a serious political, rather than legal problem.
According to Francis Mwijukye, a former Besigye aide and newly elected Member of Parliament for Buhweju County, the curtailed rights of Besigye and his supporters is a political question that can no longer be resolved through legal means. The MP-elect argues that parliament should take this as a matter of urgency.
“Where is justice when one man, who got nearly four million votes, is kept prisoner in his house, and the other man who got 5.9 million votes, is free? In other words, you are discounting four million people who voted for Dr Besigye, saying they don’t matter, and they are not Ugandans? Is that fair?” Mwijukye said on the NTV talk show On the Spot on March 24.
A number of analysts have noted how a political way out of the current political impasse will require the restoration of the proper rule of law, adoption and implementation of a number of legal, political and electoral reforms that have been proposed by a range of interested parties, including the government itself.
Indeed, in this judgment the Supreme Court, also made note of this point as contained in the advice of the amicus curiae (friends of the court), a group of law dons from Makerere University School of Law.
“They have given us a brief on issues pertaining to the holding of free and fair elections in Uganda. Suffice it to say at this point that it is high time the executive and the legislature started to seriously think about the crucial need to address legal reforms in our electoral laws,” reads the Court’s judgment.
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