{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Justice Ogoola: crime preventers illegal
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Justice Ogoola: crime preventers illegal
Justice James Munange Ogoola, a former Principal Judge has joined the growing list of critics questioning the legality and purpose of crime preventers ahead of next year's elections.
Ogoola told a news conference at Protea hotel in Kampala on Wednesday that there is no known law and legal framework under which they operate.
"If it were in our power, we would have no crime preventers of the kind that have come up suddenly from nowhere. We believe the police has a function to play, we believe the police are trained, they are deployed according to rules, they have legislation and law that govern what they do.
If we felt that they are not sufficient for the occasion, there could be other ways such as bring a law to be debated by the representative of the people in parliament to ensure what kind of crime preventers we want, how we train them, how we recruit them, how we deploy them, how we supervise them - all these are the issues that are in the dark", Ogoola said.
Ogoola's concerns come at a time when opposition politicians including presidential candidates Kizza Besigye and Amama Mbabazi, civil society activists and members of the public are also questioning the role of the crime preventers in the election process.
On Tuesday, independent presidential candidate, Amama Mbabazi expressed apprehension on the involvement of crime preventers in the alleged update of the voters register.
"I can tell you that crime preventers throughout the country have been given the voters register everywhere and they have been given the responsibility to determine whether this voter is alive or dead.
And when you are alive; they tick you, when you are dead; they put 'D'. The political commissars of the army, UPDF have been given the same and they are doing the same in their areas of operations. The question in your mind, is, why are they doing this? We have a voters register, we all have copies even our ourselves. Why would they employ state machinery because now crime preventers are appended to the police", Mbabazi said this week.
Similarly, Church of Uganda archbishop Stanley Ntagali also voiced his concerns over crime preventers after a closed-door meeting involving the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU), the Elders' Forum of Uganda (TEFU), National Consultative Forum (NCF) and politicians from various political parties at Serena hotel.
"There is a general outcry among Ugandans regarding crime preventers. They are becoming sources of crime and injustice instead of causing peace," Ntagali told the media on Tuesday.
"The police should be left to do their work because that is their main objective of keeping law and order", Ntagali said.
Fred Enanga, the police spokesperson could neither pick nor return our repeated calls. His deputy Polly Namaye declined to comment saying she was off duty. However the police leadership has in the past insisted that crime preventers are there to support police work to stop crime.
Early this year police Chief Kale Kayihura, said they were targeting to recruit and train at least 2 million crime preventers ahead of the 2016 general elections. In fact, Internal Affairs Minister, Rose Akol last week presented to the parliamentary Defence and Internal Affairs Committee the FY 2016/2017 budget framework paper for her ministry, which included the proposed budgetary allocations for Uganda Police Force.
In the framework, the ministry was requesting for Shs 37.4bn for community policing exercises aimed at recruiting and training crime preventers for the purpose of fighting crime through neighborhood watch programmes as well as bolstering the police force.
The request was rejected by the MPs - with Defence Committee Chairperson, Benny Namugwanya stating that facilitating crime preventers at the expense of the regular police force would demoralize police constables.
"First of all, you have your own children which is the regular police [and] you can not cater for it. Then you have your crime preventers whose policy is not even in place but you are able to facilitate them. We also need to know as a committee, have crime preventers really added a lot of value and what are we going to do on the issue of demotivating your regular police officers?", she said.
According to the national coordinator in charge of tertiary institutions at National Crime Preventers Forum (NCPF), Oscar Mugabe, since 2013, they have recruited and trained at least 30 youths per village. With 57,792 villages in the country, it would translate to 1.7 million crime preventers.
Meanwhile, Ogoola also announced that the two-hour presidential debate featuring all the eight candidates is set to take place on January 15, 2016 at Serena hotel to "fill in the gaps that can not be filled in the drama, in the hype and hoopla of ordinary political rallies to which the general public is treated by each candidate. Each candidate appearing sole, alone, without the benefit of the other candidates. Its drama, its hoopla, its hype but somehow it loses something and that something will be filled in by these debates"
Pastor Joseph Sserwadda, the representative of Born Again Churches on the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRC-U) governing council - the organisers of the debate explained that candidates will be presented with a set of questions that pertain to the desire, plan, vision and expectations of the masses.
President of the People's Development Party, Abed Bwanika has already expressed readiness to participate in the debate. It was another presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye who challenged the incumbent President Museveni to a debate at the start of campaings, to which he promptly agreed. In the last presidential election in 2011, Museveni did not show up for the debate instead choosing to send Vision group CEO Robert Kabushenga to debate on his behalf.
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