{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Just ‘observing’ bad behaviour isn’t enough - Comment
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Just 'observing' bad behaviour isn't enough
By L. Muthoni Wanyeki
Posted Saturday, March 5 2016 at 20:03
Kizza Besigye has been in and out of detention since the day of the poll, effectively remaining under house arrest. Opposition agents have been arrested, with the offices of the Forum for Democratic Change essentially now under control of the security services. Journalists also continue to be arrested on an almost daily basis. Human-rights organisations have received threats to their organisations and persons.
The reasons for this appear to be twofold. To prevent the filing of a presidential petition within the stipulated timeframe. And to prevent public expressions of anger over the poll.
The first intention has failed. Amama Mbabazi managed to file a presidential petition challenging the declaration of Yoweri Museveni as duly elected on the grounds of numerous documented offences against the Presidential Elections and Electoral Commission Acts and calling for nullification of the result. Apparently, civil society has also filed a similar petition.
The second intention has, however, been achieved. While the FDC base is clearly agitated — pushing for public protests — the FDC leadership has so far largely been tempered in its messaging, calling for restraint.
It is pursuing the legal route to challenge the electoral process and outcome — Mbabazi's petition is based in part on FDC contributions. Whether its call for restraint will continue to hold will, no doubt, depend on the outcome of the Supreme Court petition.
Not that anybody is particularly hopeful. The Supreme Court is not widely considered to be independent, particularly in light of new appointments to it last year. Maybe the Supreme Court will surprise us. Maybe Mbabazi has, in fact, obtained the evidentiary basis to make the numerical case about the impact of his documented offences.
But the larger point arising is this: The law is a blunt instrument. If the Supreme Court were to rule that Museveni was invalidly elected and that the supposed electoral outcomes be nullified, what then? How could Ugandans be expected to return to the polls under the same conditions? Nothing is foreseen in terms of a caretaker period, caretaker institutions and so on.
Which raises another larger point — which applies not only to Uganda but to all the countries in the region teetering on the brink of crisis because of unsatisfactory electoral processes shamelessly manipulated by incumbents. There are only two ways forward when the population is unhappy with an electoral process and outcome.
Going to the courts for outcomes likely to cause equal amounts of unhappiness. Or going to the streets for the inevitably heavy-handed state response until the mounting body count is sufficient to force engagement of the region and the rest of the international community. Leading to the now formulaic political settlement — "negotiated democracy."
The question is what it would d take for the region, for the rest of the international community, to be as firm on incumbent bad behaviour as it is on body counts. We need to call a spade a spade. Drop the routine of election observation. Get serious about people's right to to have their vote count.
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is Amnesty International's regional director for East Africa, the Horn and the Great Lakes.
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