{UAH} How Kizza Besigye has reduced the police to a lumpen militariat
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6:35 AM |
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Dr Kizza Besigye holds Uganda's record for facing the highest number of court cases in Uganda. He also holds the record for being the object of the highest number of police detentions.
Fortunately or unfortunately, he has never been found guilty. And save for the 2005 rape case, none of the cases have reached the level where the courts require him to defend himself (prima facie).
One wonders whether these perennial detentions and court charges could be linked to the fact that Dr Besigye holds yet another record: being the Uganda Opposition leader who has made the highest number of shots at the position of president of Uganda.
He has been consistent in his political activism; sometimes exposing himself to the risk of mortal danger. And in dealing with Dr Besigye's political activism, police officers have sometimes operated outside the law.
That is why some Ugandans now call our beloved Uganda Police Force a 'Kifesi police'. For the latest arrivals from Planet Mars, Kifesi is Uganda's attempt at organised crime. A state is the constitutive virtual power of a polity (a people) and a government is the administrative levers (or machinery) used to functionalise or deliver or exercise state power.
Exercising state power is a group affair; that is why people wishing to run or operate government constitute themselves into a cohesive party or group. Even military rulers constitute groups like military council, military commission, etc.
State power is about the people; the ruling party or group therefore holds state power under a trusteeship mandate. And this trusteeship is limited by the regulatory mechanisms of the constitution (the constitution is the state.
The constitution could just be popular wishes or the realisation that the people holding state power are abusing it).
For the effective management of the polity, the constitution allocates optimal authority to the government and its agencies like the Uganda Police Force. The police have enough power to deliver on their mandate of preventing and fighting crime (which is the functional payload for the traditional 'keeping law and order').
Because of the importance the state (the people) attache to 'keeping law and order', the constitution assigns the police so much power; so much power that a police officer's ID can be used as an arrest warrant. In fact a police officer's ID is called a warrant card.
But whereas a police officer's ID can be used as a warrant of arrest, 'arrest' remains an administrative function with laid down procedure. A police officer is still required to explain why he or she is arresting you.
Which is why you should ask: with all those powers, why should our beloved Uganda Police Force reduce themselves to kifesi louts? The answer: Because our beloved Uganda Police Force has to operate outside the law in order to effectively respond to the Besigye phenomenon.
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I have learnt that the police has embarked on a drive to play public relations and clean its image. They call the drive 'Rectification Effort' and could be headed by the political Commissar. Don't ask me whether the Police Force needs a political commissar.
I don't come to condemn IGP Kale Kayihura; neither bring God's mercies to Dr Besigye. The latter and the police are mere actors in the cast of a play (probably titled "The State of The Hurt" or "The Hurt of The State") which speaks to the old truths: a few shall die or suffer for the many to live.
The Besigye phenomenon is therefore the story of how the simple actions of a single person can impact on the government and how it exercises state power. But this Besigye phenomenon could complicate the management of '2021'.
Mr Bisiika is the executive
editor of East Africa Flagpost.
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