Why are church leaders holding out against President Museveni?

One of the highlights of President Yoweri Museveni’s New Year’s message was the blistering attack that he launched on some religious leaders, accusing them of “arrogance” and making pronouncements on matters that they are not very competent about.

Mr Museveni’s remarks seem to have been provoked by the widespread condemnation by Christian leaders of Parliament’s December 20 vote that saw Article 102(b) expunged from the Constitution and presidential age limits scrapped.

Three hundred seventeen MPs voted for and 97 against the amendment. MPs also voted to extend from five to seven, the terms of office for the President and Parliament.

The Christmas Day sermons in most of the houses of worship seemed to suggest that religious leaders were apprehensive that Parliament’s decision was potentially catastrophic as it is likely to plunge Uganda back into chaos.

The clerics hit back at Museveni. The Orthodox Church head, Metropolitan Jonah Lwanga, was first to shoot. He reminded Mr Museveni that it was not for his government to grant or determine the right to speak.

What is perhaps the most unequivocal came from the Archbishop of Kampala Diocese, Cyprian Kizito Lwanga, who during the burial on Tuesday of former Archbishop of Uganda Livingstone Nkoyoyo, admonished those who are trying to muzzle the Church. His remarks also implied that the Church will not be bowing to those pressures.

“The remarks we make are none other than those telling the truth because the Church is the conscience of the State. So please see us as your conscience and we shall continue being a good conscience,” he said.

That is certainly not the last we have heard of this. NRM attack dogs and Mr Museveni might be tempted to talk back, but the NRM’s discomfort with the clergy’s brazenness is surprising.

It is not so long ago that Mr Museveni announced that government had gazetted February 16 a public holiday in commemoration of the killing on February 16, 1977, of Janani Luwum who was Archbishop of the Province of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Boga-Zaire (Democratic Republic of Congo) at the time.
Luwum became the first sitting Archbishop of the Anglican Church to be killed in office since the killings in 1556 and 1645AD of Archbishops of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer and William Laud.

Former UN Under-Secretary General and UPC president Olara Otunnu says Luwum was killed for speaking truth to power.

Many of those who fought former president Idi Amin did it from outside Uganda and belonged to groups that had military wings. Even when he had an opportunity to flee, Luwum, who did not belong to any political group, did not.

His weapons were the truth and the courage to tell it. He talked about the killings, bad economic policies and misrule and threatened to lead civil disobedience, all of which were anathema. He was as much a freedom fighter as those who took up guns.

Luwum remains the biggest symbol of internal civilian resistance against a leadership that had run amok. That was probably at the back of Mr Museveni’s mind when he declared a public holiday in his honour.

“Since we have Uganda Martyrs’ Day public holiday; February 16, the day Archbishop Janani Luwum was murdered, is going to be a public holiday so that people can get time to celebrate his life,” he said.

Why then is Mr Museveni, who recognises the part Luwum played in the fight to rid Uganda of bad leaders, intent on shutting up the clergy when it is warning of pitfalls that might plunge Uganda back into turmoil?

No democracy
During his end of year talk, Mr Museveni suggested that some elements within the clergy are bent on imposing pseudo democracy, but Prof Paul Wangoola, who was a member of the National Consultative Council (NCC) which served as an interim Parliament following the fall of the Idi Amin regime, says Mr Museveni and the NRM have no democratic credentials to talk about.

“He doesn’t want dissent. That is a characteristic of all dictators and all of them start with silencing dissent within. That is why he is not happy that there were some NRM MPs who voted against the constitutional amendment,” he says.

A few events within the NRM’s political history seem to absolve Prof Wangoola. In November 1999 when Col Dr Kizza Besigye penned the paper, “An Insider’s View of How NRM Lost the Broad-base”, which he had thought would provoke internal debate with a view of correcting what went wrong, he was accused of raising issues in a “wrong forum”. It was only by a whisker that he survived being court martialed.

In early in 2013, the party expelled five of its MPs for dissent and again on October 13 last year, the party’s parliamentary caucus threw out five of its MPs for opposing the controversial constitutional amendment Bill.
The party continues to ring fence the post of chairman, making it the preserve of Mr Museveni who has always been “unopposed” and the party’s “sole candidate”.

NRM “organs” were in October 2000 quick to disassociate themselves from Dr Besigye when he announced that he would be challenging Mr Museveni for the presidency.

In June 2015, long before the party had convened a delegates’ conference to determine who would be its candidate, it disowned its former secretary general and prime minister, Mr Amama Mbabazi, when he attempted to contest for the presidency on an NRM ticket.

“Amama Mbabazi is not an aspirant sponsored by the NRM political organisation within the meaning of the NRM constitution and the law,” the secretary general, Ms Justine Kasule Lumumba, wrote in a June 20 letter to the police.

Other potential candidates, Felix Okot Ogong and Capt David Ruhinda Maguru, were also denied a chance.

“Dictators are never satisfied that they have effectively dealt with internal dissent. They want to ensure that everyone keeps silent. If they must talk, they should sing their praises. That is why the Opposition is suffering,” Prof Wangoola argues.

The deputy director of the Uganda Media Centre, Col Shaban Bantariza, says that it is for the religious leaders’ own good that they should not be talking politics.

“Politics is intrigue and it is terrible. How will they deal with that? If they take sides, it means that they will get involved in intrigue and other terrible things. That is why we insist that they should not talk politics,” he says.

It would appear that sections of those in government prefer to read the Constitution, which the NRM wrote and promulgated with the same pair of lenses that former Attorney General and minister of Justice, Prof Khiddu Makubuya, used in December 2005 to arrive at the conclusion that Dr Besigye who was incarcerated in Luzira to answer for treason, concealment of treason and rape could not be nominated because he was not “on the same level of innocence as that of the other presidential candidates”, which is tragic.

Religious leader are Ugandans. The dog collar does not make them lesser citizens than Mr Museveni or Bantariza. Unless the Constitution is amended to lump them with cultural leaders who are barred from participating in partisan politics, the State will remain impotent to do anything to quiet or punish them. That is not lost to Mr Bantariza.

“That is their right, but if they are to comment about politics it should be in a nonpartisan way, but now if they come out even after a law has been passed by a majority of MPs you that is wrong,” he says.
If the words of Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga are anything to go by, the Church will not go quiet, but Bantariza warns that it should be ready to deal with the consequences.

“Politics is quicksand. It shifts and you sink in it. If they come into the open then we get the right to engage them personally and in the open yet it would not be right from to attack my Bishop. It would not be proper for me to attack my Bishop. Their respect belongs to all of us. We wouldn’t want them dragged down,” he says.