{UAH} Mubiru Musoke on Uganda's Pre-rigged Vote
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http://www.burkinastyle.com/content/ugandadecides2016-how-outcome-ugandas-election-was-elaborately-pre-rigged
#UgandaDecides2016 How Outcome of Uganda's Election Was Elaborately Pre-Rigged
People's candidate. If Dr. Besigye wins will he be permitted by the militarized regime to take office? Writer says the election is pre-rigged
By the dawn of 2016 signs were abundant that there will be many problems arising from the electoral process in Uganda due to the gaps created by lack of integrity in the preliminary stages of the electoral process of 2016.
The problem started with the procurement process that produced the Biometric Voter Verification System (BVVS) which was flawed and corrupt. The procurement scandal was, in turn, engineered by the architects of rigging the 2016 election whose plan was hatched long before the procurement process was initiated. First of all let us look at the content of the voters' registry which is at the center of the general rigging formula of the 2016 election.
I THE CONTENT OF THE VOTERS' REGISTRY
No one can conduct a free and fair election as mandated by Article 61 of the constitution without an accurate voters' registry.
Therefore, for the masters of election rigging in Uganda the secret of rigging elections inseparable from compiling a voters' registry that can be manipulated as the best starting point to deliver the desired rigged results. First you control, or if you can, you rig the procurement process that determines the content of the voters' registry and, therefore, the results of the electoral process. In fact the real initial point of rigging the elections requires putting in place a subservient (politicized) Electoral Commission Chairman that can serve your interests without asking questions.
All efforts and demands by the opposition to reform the electoral process was denied for this very reason. Personnel of the Electoral Commission are critical if you want to rig the electoral process. Yoweri Museveni accomplished his goal long ago under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) system before the multi-party system was restored in 2005. Under the NRM system the public institutions (army, police, the Electoral Commission and civil service) were and had to be politicized as parts of the movement system. Now you understand the purpose of the Kyankwanzi political school. The system worked as one political and administrative unit within the movement system equipped with an indoctrinating unit. In fact under that system the movement system and the state were one and the same.
Therefore we are now dealing with the consequences of the fusion of the movement system with the state which destroyed the level playing field through corruption and indoctrination. Election observers are window dressing. They are accredited by the Electoral Commission and to some extent their activities are "guided" by the Electoral Commission. They also have to abide by an ethical code of conduct laid down in the UN Principles for International Election Observation and Non-Partisan Election Observation.
Attention has to be focused on the procurement process. It is a good illustration of the nature and pervasiveness of the problem we are dealing with. You have to see the whole picture in order to understand the nature, extent and function of all its corrupting or moving parts. The procuring process is a good place to begin.
- The procurement process
The procurement process worth $19 million (Shs66 billion) under which Smartmatic was awarded a contract to supply gadgets to be used in the electoral process chosen against Diamond Gate General Trading, Ltd. and firms from Israel, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, and South Africa was rigged and corrupt. Diamond Gate General Trading Company, Ltd. petitioned the Electoral Commission for administrative review of the procurement process but was told on June 8, 2015 that the procurement process "followed the law" and, therefore, there was no reason to review it, even though, in fact, the process violated the law. That was the first nail in the electoral coffin.
Nevertheless, a whistleblower petitioned the Ministry of Justice alleging that other bidders had been unfairly eliminated because the Electoral Commission did not carry out the required "due diligence" on Smartmatic as required by the law. Moreover, government "insiders," with pecuniary interests in the deal, were involved in "fronting" the successful company. Smartmatic gadgets, as it turned out by tracing its previous business dealings, were of an inferior quality. Smartmatic battery in each gadget, for example, could only last eight hours. It is not surprising, given this background that the quotations by Smartmatic were below market price. Smartmatic makes money by selling cheap, unreliable products. The Solicitor General warned the Electoral Commission about Smartmatic being blacklisted by countries which had hired its services in the past. Smartmatic had unsatisfactory results in the Mexico, Philippines, and United States. Nobody in the Electoral Commission would listen to all that. Their mind was made up, regardless of the consequences. Someone was destined to make money on the deal.
In order for the technology procured to perform properly, regardless of where it originated and its quality, it should have been involved in the voter registration, the updating of voters' registry and the storage of the records in order to guarantee the integrity of the data and the efficient performance of the gadgets. Many of the shortcomings of software and hardware malfunction would have been discovered and probably fixed at that stage. The Electoral Commission ignored all these factors clearly with an eye to ensuring that Smartmatic won the contract. It is not therefore surprising that the Electoral Commission asked for extra money amounting to $600,000 (Shs2billion) in order to airlift the gadgets whose procurement was finalized less than eight months and delivered just a few weeks before the February 18, 2016 election. To what extent the operators of those gadgets have been trained to acquaint themselves with operating the gadgets remains a secret but not a mystery.
According to the records there are 28,010 polling stations in Uganda countrywide. The number of Biometric Voter Verification System (BVVS) machines imported is 32,334. Right there the statistics spell trouble for the integrity of the system. Supposing 10,000 machines fail what happens? Under the existing contract there are only 4,324 machines to spare and the assumption is that they are all perfect. To be safe each polling station should have at least two or three machines in order to ensure that failure of one or two gadgets does not turn the electoral process into an avoidable disaster. To make a bad situation worse, because the gadgets arrived at the last minute there was little time to train the people entrusted with the duty to operate the gadgets. The integrity of the software is yet to be tested on the voting day, February 18, 2016.
There is another aspect to the rigging game in Uganda, experience tells us. This is the manipulation of the statistics. So let us look at the mysterious world of statistics which do not lie except the people who use them to say what they want them to say.
- Population Statistics of Uganda
The Electoral Commission claims to have registered 15,277,196 Ugandans "eligible" to participate in the 2016 elections. This figure is suspect—very suspect. First of all the figure is not derived from individuals personally registering to vote. Instead we are told that the figure is derived from an "extraction" of the data that was used by the Ministry of Internal Affairs to provide identity cards to qualifying individuals. First of all, identity cards are given to anybody regardless of their age. This means that many people who were eligible for identity cards were not necessarily eligible as voters under the Constitution of Uganda which prescribes under Article 59 that only people above 18 years old are eligible to vote. So why did the Electoral Commission use existing data collected for a different purpose to compile a voter' registry?
The population of Uganda has a median age of 15.7 which is far below the voting age of 18. According to the 2014 National Population and Housing Census (NPHC) the population of Uganda was estimated to be 34,856,813, one year before the voters' registry was "created." The population statisticians estimated the number of people below 18 by the middle of 2015 when the voter registry was "captured" from the data of the identity cards in the Ministry of Internal Affairs was 19,874,000 or the equivalent of 56.7% of the population of Uganda. Therefore the total number of Ugandans above 18 years old at the time the data was "captured" was 14,420, 916. Using the statistics of NPHC or UNHS the number of people on the Electoral Commission's register is in excess by 294,383 and 856, 280 people respectively. 70% of the population of Uganda at this time is below 35 years old; 50% of these people are estimated to be below 15 years old. The big question then becomes: how is it possible that more than 50% of the population of Uganda is qualified to vote or above 18 years of age?
The integrity of these statistics becomes even more suspect and bizarre when we compare the populations of Kenya and Tanzania to that of Uganda. In the most recent elections in Tanzania in 2015 there were 23,161,440 people on the voters' registry. According to available statistics 15,596,110 Tanzanians voted in the 2015 election which is the equivalent of 67.3% of the registered voters. Tanzania has a population of about 50 million people. When we turn to Kenya during the 2013 election there were 14,352,545 biometric registered voters, that is, about 1,000,000 less than Uganda even though Kenya has a bigger and older population than Uganda. The Non-biometric voters in Kenya amounted to 36,236 people. That gives us a total of the people on the voters' registry in Kenya of about 14,388,781 names. Kenya's total population in the 2009 census was carried out was 38,610,097. The people who participated in the 2013 elections in Kenya were 12,221,053 registered voters. Are we going to see more Ugandans going to the polls on February 18, 2016, than the Kenyans who participated in the 2013 elections? If we do we should suspect the content and integrity of Uganda's electoral process.
Clearly, the statistics of registered voters in Uganda when compared to those of Kenya and Tanzania, two countries which have a larger population than Uganda, the statistics of the number of people on the registry of voters in Uganda is suspect. First of all the method of compiling the registry of voters in Uganda was improper and full of flaws. Compiling a voters' registry by "capturing" data from a database consisting of people some of whom were not eligible to vote is not the proper way to compile an accurate voters' registry that has integrity and accuracy. Second, comparing the voters' registries in Tanzania and Kenya with that of Uganda raises more suspicions regarding the integrity of the voters' registry in Uganda.
- Voter Blocs and Election Rigging in Uganda
When we look at to the history of Uganda it becomes clear that the amount of people who participate in voting has been declining since 1996. In 1996 72.60% of the registered voters participated in the election. In 2001 the percentage of people who participated in voting declined by 3% to 69.19%. During the last election in 2011 the number of people who participated in the election had declined by almost 10% from 69.19% in 2001 down to 59.29%. If this trend continues one should expect a smaller percentage of the voters to participate in the 2016 election. Ironically, however, we may be shocked to find that over 75% of the registered voters may be able to "cast" their votes on February 18, 2016.
The sad news reflected in the declining percentages of people who are ready to defend their democratic rights is that more Ugandans either do not care about their rights or they have given up the hope of influencing the electoral process because they are living under a political system without moral integrity. It is sad that of 5.7 million people who did not vote in the 2011 about 2 million were in urban areas of Kampala and Wakiso; and yet, demographically the people in the urban areas are expected to spearhead social change leading to democratization and often vote for the opposition. That king of apathy, unfortunately, is a political bonus to NRM.
Uganda's median age of 15.7, is far below that of Kenya and Tanzania. It is expected from the statistical data that one in every two, or 50% of the voters in Uganda, will be voting for the first time on February 18, 2016. It should therefore be easy to spot the ghost voters who are not expected to be on the voters roll whose only purpose is to rig the election for the NRM regime. From a geographical point of view, it should also be easy to detect voter stuffing since reliable data of all voter blocks in the country is available.
For example, Kampala city has about 2.4 million voters. The Southwest has 2 million voters. An area in the east near the river Nile known as Kiira has 1.5 million voters. The North has about 1.24 eligible voters. The Elgon area has about 1.47 million voters and central Uganda has about 1.46 million voters. That gives us a total of about 10.5 million people located in specific "voting blocs" throughout the country. It should therefore be easy to detect rigging by comparing the number of votes cast during the election in these different voting blocs. If a voting block produces far more votes than expected rigging should be suspected and investigations should focus on that area to find out where the excessive votes came from.
It would be improbable, for example, for the Western block to produce 4 million votes or a voting bloc in the north to produce 3 million votes given what we statistically know about the sizes of the voting blocs throughout the country.
The statistics of these voting blocs are reliable because they were not produced for voting purposes but for accurate census purposes throughout the country. The figures in the voting blocs were not captured from existing data bases. Moreover, we should also point out that although the voters' registry has more than 15 million people it is also a fact that 2.5 million national IDs have not been collected from the Electoral Commission. There may be two possible explanations for this tantalizing fact. Either the IDs were made for people who did not exist and therefore data was used for fraudulent purposes or the individuals whose data was "captured" do not exist anymore. This means that one cannot expect more than 13 million people to vote during the 2016 election. Kenya, for example, had 14,388,781 names on the registry but only 12,221,053 registered voters participated in the election. If that happens there would be more voters in Uganda participating in the election than there were in Kenya in 2013. That would not make sense if the participation of voters in Uganda has been declining since 1996. Another aspect of looking at the integrity of the electoral process is to examine campaign expenses.
- Campaign expenses
President Museveni spent Shs27billion ($7.8million) in the two months of November and December 2015. He was followed by Amama Mbabazi who, as an independent—that is, not supported by a political party—is a self-sponsoring candidate, spent Shs1.3billion ($375,200). Dr. Kizza Besigye flag-bearer of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) spent Shs976million ($283,000). The question is: where did President Museveni and Amama Mbabazi get all that money? It is important for the integrity of the electoral process to reveal where the money in these campaign expenses was obtained from because it was not publicly raised. The only candidate who has raised money from the public is Dr. Besigye who, in fact, has spent the least amount on his campaign.
The Political Parties and Organizations Act regulates campaign spending. The third schedule to the Political Parties and Organizations Act requires each political party to file a form declaring the assets and liabilities or "other particulars" of a political party. Under section 3 of the third schedule a political party has to declare the following assets: all the cash, real estate and other assets a political party possesses. Under section 4 of the third schedule a political party is required to list all its liabilities. The political party is also required to specify its income for the "previous year" and the income of the "current year."
These provisions were designed to protect the integrity of the electoral process. Section 6 of the schedule requires the political parties to list all the donations and pledges made to the political party. The political party is required to keep an "accurate and permanent record" consisting of contributions, donations and pledges in cash or kind, a statement of accounts showing the sources of funds, names of persons who have made the contributions, property that belongs to the party should be declared, and records should be accessible to the members of the party and the accounts of the political party must be audited by a professionally qualified auditor every year. Declaration of the assets and liabilities of the political party must be made annually to the Electoral Commission. The biggest problem is not the law but its enforcement by an Electoral Commission that has no integrity or trust of the people. All Ugandans know that the head of the Electoral Commission, Dr. Badru Kiggundu, is Museveni's puppet. That situation alone leaves much to be desired.
Under the Political Parties and Organizations (Amendment) Act 2010 section 14A was added. Under this new section the government contributes funds or other "public resources" towards the activities of political parties represented in Parliament. Registered political parties are funded by government in respect of elections and their day to day activities. In respect of elections the government is supposed to finance political parties on an "equal basis."
In respect of day to day activities funding of political parties should be based on "numerical strength of each political party or organization in the Parliament." The funds provided to the political party by the government are subject to audit. The question is whether the money spent by Museveni in the amount of $7.8 million in two months was legally and transparently obtained through the official channels specified above. More recently President Museveni hired 5000 "motorists" to campaign for him. In addition, the so-called "crime preventers" were given motorcycles which some turned into taxis otherwise known as boda bodas. All this spells disaster in the electoral process. But even worse it amounts to abuse of office and violation of human right in selfish and irrational pursuit of electoral victory at any cost.
II CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT TORTURE AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Uganda did not just ratify the Statute of Rome which established the International Criminal Court but "domesticated" the Rome Statute and made it the law of Uganda. It was therefore astounding to read in the press NRM secretary general Justine Lumumba's unequivocal statement: "When President Museveni, the chief fighter, is still seated on the throne, whatever they are planning, tell them the government of NRM is not going anywhere! Don't send your children to bring chaos in Kampala and cause confusion during elections, disrupt peace in the country, government will handle you…. you will be shot … The state will kill your children if they come to disorganize and destabilize the peace and security in Kampala and Wakiso."
- A Secret Decision of the Security Council?
In order to understand the context within which Lumumba made the statement quoted above one has to explain why statutory members of Uganda's Security Council such as Gen. Kale Kayihura, head of the police and the Minister of Internal Affairs made very similar statements to that made by Justine Lumumba. Although the Secretary General of the ruling party is not a statutory member of the Security Council the President has the power under the Security Organizations Act to invite any one in government to attend the Security Council.
All evidence points in one direction, that is, that our conclusion is valid that there was a conspiracy in the Security Council to threaten Ugandan voters and prevent them from exercising their rights to vote. The unison that greeted Lumumba's shocking statement from the members of the Security Council, a statement which was not condemned by the Chief Executive, the President, who, under oath swore to uphold the constitution and is responsible for enforcing the laws of Uganda, among which laws is the Rome Statute, is not only astounding but leads to the inevitable conclusion that the threats made by Lumumba were actually approved and endorsed for dissemination by the Security Council as a campaign strategy to intimidate the voters. The primary objective was to force voters to conform to the wishes of the vicious dictators slumbering in Statehouse.
Knowing Museveni, the cunning military strategist this makes sense.
Museveni later came out and "assured" the people that the election will be "peaceful." If this is true, and he was honest, how come Museveni did not reprimand Lumumba for making that shocking statement? The arrogant Museveni has always believed that the people he "rules" are a bunch of fools. Ugandans, according to Museveni, are incapable of reading through his deceptive and often vicious politics. We can, therefore, reasonably conclude that there was a "conspiracy" in the Security Council to commit crimes against humanity in Uganda during the 2016 election, that is, if the people protest the rigging of the election. Such threats, directed at the integrity of the electoral process, are not only credible and intimidating to many voters, they are deliberately intended to have an impact on the outcome of the electoral process as a whole because they negatively affect the supporters of the opposition. It is a form of rigging the elections. Do not be surprised if you see soldiers wearing masks in the vicinity of the polling stations on February 18, 2016.
- Crimes Against Humanity
Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, which is part of the law of Uganda, a crime against humanity may be murder, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity, enforced disappearance, or other inhumane acts of similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or mental or physical health. Under Article 7(2) definition of a crime against humanity includes an "attack directed against any civilian population." Therefore the threats of shooting people protesting a rigged election, a right Ugandans have under Article 29 of the constitution and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, if carried out, would be "crimes against humanity" as defined by the Rome Statute. Crimes against humanity have already been committed in Uganda on an extensive scale in northern Uganda and Luwero triangle. It is a crime against humanity to "displace a population." These are the types of crimes for which the Deputy President of Kenya Ruto is charged with by the ICC Prosecutor in The Hague.
Lumumba's unfortunate utterances are a basis to charge all the people who attended the Security Council Chaired by Museveni and subsequently reiterated at various fora by members of the Security Council. The same sentiments about how those who protest the rigging of the elections will be illegally treated can only come out of a regime that does not respect human rights. Indeed, the similarity of Lumumba's statements to Idi Amin's threats chills the spine of a normal person. In 30 years we have made no progress as far as protection of human rights is concerned. What is certain, however, is the fact that the people who attended the Security Council have to be presumed as "acting with a common purpose." This phrase is used in the charges against Ruto and Sang by the Prosecutor at the ICC.
- Criminal Liability under the Rome Statute
Under Article 28 of the Rome Statute a military commander or person effectively acting as a military or police commander is criminally responsible for crimes within the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court committed by forces under his or her "effective command and control," or "effective authority and control." Article 28 of the Rome Statute therefore covers Museveni as Commander-in-Chief, Kayihura as head of the police, General Katumba Wamala as commander of the army and all "officials" responsible for issuing orders to their subordinates. A superior is criminally responsible for crimes "committed by subordinates under his or her effective authority and control." Should Lumumba's prediction come to pass many "officials" in Uganda will be headed to The Hague, sooner than later.
Article 27 makes it clear that the Rome Statute "shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity." Immunities which may attach to the "official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person." In other words, sovereign immunity enjoyed by a Heads of State under normal circumstances is not available to President Museveni under the Rome Statute.
That is why President Uhuru Kenyatta was charged by the ICC Prosecutor in The Hague for the electoral chaos and murder that erupted in Kenya during the Kenya elections of 2007. It is therefore astounding to some of us that people like Lumumba think that either they are above the law or they have immunity against criminal liability and, surprisingly, have the courage to make statements like that quoted above without contemplating the consequences. Are these people aware of the content of the laws they are supposed to enforce? The law is very clear on the criminal liability of "officials" engaged in or even "abetting" the commission of "crimes against humanity" as specified in the Rome Statute. Fortunately, there is also universal jurisdiction for the crime of torture.
- Universal Jurisdiction for Torture
Uganda ratified and domesticated the Convention against Torture. Under international law there is universal jurisdiction for the violation of the provisions of the Convention against Torture. This means, as the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's case has amply illustrated, it is not necessary for the ICC to prosecute a person who commits torture because there is universal jurisdiction for the crime of torture. Any country which has ratified the Convention against Torture can exercise jurisdiction to prosecute an individual who has committed the crime of torture. Like in the case of ICC sovereign immunity is not a defense against charges for torture.
The Convention against Torture came into force in 1984 but it remained a toothless legal instrument until the arrest of Pinochet in London in October 1998. Pinochet was arrested at the request of the Spanish magistrate on charges of murder and torture. A request for his extradition to face the charges in Spain was challenged on grounds of sovereign immunity. It was argued, on behalf of Pinochet, that since the acts for which he was charged occurred while he was Head of State in Chile not only were they committed as part of official acts but he was entitled to sovereign immunity for his actions and therefore United Kingdom had no authority to extradite him to Spain and Spain had no jurisdiction to try him for the offences of murder and torture committed in Chile during his presidency.
The Queen's Bench Divisional Court of London, before Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Chief Justice Mr. Justice Collins and Mr. Justice Richards, ruled in favor of Pinochet in November 1998, granting an order of certiorari to quash the warrants issued pursuant to the provisions of the Extradition Act, 1989, for the provisional arrest of Senator Augusto Pinochet Agarte, dated October 22, 1998. An appeal to the House of Lords reversed the decision of the Kings Bench Divisional Court. The first decision of the House of Lords was, however, set aside due to alleged conflict of interest by one of the sitting Lords. In January 1999 a new hearing before different judges was held. The decision was issued in March 1999 setting aside the decision of the lower court.
There were three main issues before the court. First, which crimes of those alleged in the extradition request, could be brought against Pinochet. Second, there was the issue of whether Pinochet was protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity against the charges under British law, as the lower court had ruled. Lastly, who had jurisdiction to try Pinochet if he was not immune. Answers to these three issues have gone a long way to open up new developments in the law against torture. Lord Brown-Wilkinson wrote the main judgment for the court.
On the first issue the court held that the Torture Convention of 1984 did not create a new crime because torture was an international crime before the convention was adopted. The Torture Convention simply provided an international system "under which the international criminal, the torturer, could find no safe haven." Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act of September 29, 1988, incorporated the Torture Convention into English law and made torture, wherever committed worldwide, triable in United Kingdom. Since Chile, Spain and United Kingdom are all parties to the convention they were bound by the treaty to punish the crime of torture, no matter where it was committed. Therefore, applying the principle of double criminality created by the Torture Convention both United Kingdom and Spain had jurisdiction to try Pinochet for torture committed after the cutoff date of September 29, 1988. The court pointed out that the Torture Convention created "a worldwide universal jurisdiction" for the crime of torture.
The court further held that a single act of official torture was torture within the meaning of torture under the Convention. Superior orders did not provide a defense against charges of torture under the Convention. The principle of universal jurisdiction means that if the state with the most obvious jurisdiction did not seek to extradite the accused the state where the alleged torturer was found has an obligation to prosecute him. Chile adopted the Torture Convention on October 30, 1988 and United Kingdom on December 8, 1988. Therefore each of the two countries had jurisdiction to try Pinochet.
The main question for the court to resolve, however, was sovereign immunity. The simple "question then was whether the alleged organization of state torture by Senator Pinochet would constitute an act committed by him as a part of his official functions as head of state," enabling him to enjoy sovereign immunity. The court answered the question in the negative.
III CONCLUSION
The final outcome of the 2016 electoral process in Uganda will depend on the courage and determination of Ugandans to ensure that the electoral process produces credible results.
Predicting the result of the election is impossible because it requires knowledge of the amount of courage Ugandans can muster to overcome the hurdles and threats dictatorship has laid in their way. However, social change always happens silently and therefore can give anybody in the prediction business a big surprise.
As long as Ugandans can be intimidated into subservience to accept rigged electoral results produced by a corrupted process which has no integrity, Ugandans will continue to suffer and bear the brunt of dictatorship. Democracy is not guaranteed by gratuity granted to a people by the corrupt leadership in power. It is demanded and secured by the people as a right.
People have an inherent right to fight for their human rights. After all Article 20 of the constitution of Uganda declares that human rights are "inherent." They are not granted by the state.
Leaders overstaying in power do so for fear of being prosecuted for the crimes they perpetrate while abusing their office as Pinochet did. This condition is the main cause to hang to power indefinitely. But such a tactic is not a viable long term solution as Pinochet's case teaches us. Excuses Museveni has given that he wants to "give" East Africans a federation before he retires from politics amount to political fraud. Moreover, it is the same Museveni who has consistently opposed federalism in Uganda; why should he want federalism for East Africans.
East Africa does not need a specific leader in the form of a corrupt Museveni in order to establish federalism. East Africans are smart enough to do that for themselves without the aid of a greedy corrupt dictator. Worst of all an incorrigible dictator like Museveni cannot tell people when or how to get federalism in Uganda or East Africa because he has no rational political philosophy.
The people have a right both under domestic and international law to demand a democratic electoral process which has integrity and serves their needs rather than those of a dictator.
Those who intimidate, torture or murder citizens demanding the enjoyment of their "inherent" rights like Ms. Lumumba, Gen. Kayihura, Gen. Katumba Wamala and Museveni belong to The Hague under the safe custodianship of the International Criminal Court. The rule of law must prevail and protect the integrity of the electoral process.
Dictatorship must be brought to an end by all legitimate means possible, including force. This is the law of history and inevitable social change. People have a right to democracy under international law.
Museveni took up arms in 1981 supposedly to "restore" democracy to Uganda. When Museveni argued from the bush that people have "a right to rebel" against tyranny he was deceiving the people in order to justify and rationalize his politics of engaging in the so-called liberation war in order to grab political power. He had no intention of democratizing Uganda.
His colleagues in the bush are gradually discovering this harsh truth one by one. The same right to rebel against tyranny still exists for all Ugandans today, notwithstanding Lumumba's threats or Museveni's philosophical bankruptcy.
Sooner than later dictatorship will be vanquished and Uganda will be free.
Mubiru Mubirumusoke, Chairman
Federalist Alliance of Democracy and Development in Uganda Inc.
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