Where do the tape leaks leave Kayihura?

A wife of an officer being roughed up by female police officers. Photo by Abubaker Lubowa

What you need to know:

Against the wall? Recently, the recordings in which the police chief interviews ruling party members about the supposed scheme by Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi to stand against Museveni in the 2016 polls, leaked to the media. The police came out to say the tapes were stolen and one of their own has since been arrested over the issue. Sunday Monitor’s Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi looks at what the tapes could mean to Kayihura’s career.

The police reacted to the release of audio recordings in which Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura interviews ruling party members about the alleged plot by Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi to challenge President Museveni for the presidency by claiming that the tapes were stolen from them.

But, according to Forum for Democratic Change president, Mugisha Muntu, all that is “fruitless damage control.”

“In the face of this incontestable evidence; damaging exposure; caught on tape in his own voice convincing people to support President Museveni,” Maj Gen Muntu says, “who will he (Kayihura) convince in future that he is acting in a neutral manner?”

And even if it were true that the recordings were stolen from the police, Muntu says, “the theft is justified by the scale of abuse that the tapes expose.”
In one of the tapes, Kayihura, after hearing from a National Resistance Movement member from Kayunga District (Alex Kasirivu) how Mbabazi’s group had allegedly mobilised against Museveni, asks his informer which advice he had for Museveni.

This recording is just one of the 87 statements that were recorded about the alleged Mbabazi plot to challenge Museveni, the police say.
Two NRM youth leaders linked to Mbabazi, who is the party’s secretary general, have since been charged with, among other things, bribing NRM members to sign a petition to challenge the Kyankwanzi resolution in which party members agreed to have President Museveni as a sole party candidate for the 2016 polls.

The police inquests, led by Kayihura himself, led to a bitter fallout between him and Mbabazi’s wife, Ms Jacqueline Mbabazi, prompting Ms Mbabazi to accuse Kayihura, in a Sunday Monitor interview, of doing politics instead of doing police work. The question has been why Kayihura felt that it is a matter for the police to inquire into whether Mbabazi planned to take on Museveni in a political contest.

Answer
By way of explanation, a police source close to Kayihura told us that one needs to go back to 2009 to look for the answer. The source claimed that that year, a new Anti-Corruption Act was passed, classifying political parties as public bodies, comparable say to Uganda Revenue Authority and Kampala Capital City Authority.

He said this gave the police licence to intervene in the way parties are run and that the police got interested in the NRM affair and eventually charged the pro-Mbabazi youths because they were found to be “giving out money for something that should be done voluntarily.”

But Kayihura’s critics, who for years have accused him of working to sustain Museveni’s politics, will not have any of that. And, we need to stress, it is difficult, probably impossible, to get an opposition politician in this country – and indeed anyone opposed to President Museveni’s rule – to speak in favour of the police boss.

Ms Beti Kamya, the president of the opposition party Uganda Federal Alliance, says of Kayihura: “He has wrongly defined the job of the police as making sure that President Museveni does not lose power.”
President Museveni, on the contrary, often speaks approvingly of Kayihura’s record. On a number of occasions, including at the burial of former intelligence chief Noble Mayombo, Museveni referred to Kayihura as a “good NRM cadre.” He has also publicly saluted him for crushing the Walk-to-Work protests.

But all that was before what has come to be known as the “Kale Leaks”. Will things change in the face of the new reality or will the President regard the incident as just one excusable lapse on Kayihura’s part?
Will the opposition seize the moment and force Museveni’s hand against a police chief who many of them have wanted out for long? Where do the Kale Leaks leave IGP Kale Kayihura?

Tough weeks ahead
The initial blows have been thrown already. In Parliament on Wednesday, the opposition, led by Wafula Oguttu, required Prime Minister Mbabazi, who is also the leader of government business in the House, to explain the leaked tapes, Kayihura’s conduct and that of the police force in general.

Mbabazi smiled, hesitated and smiled again. When he pronounced the word “police”, he clearly did it with extra care. He repeated it four times. When he finally spoke, however, he offered nothing damning.

He said in part: “The IGP is performing his duty. The government is not aware that he is campaigning for or against Mbabazi ...This is obvious our police must build a reputation where it is respected by all and it is critical that this is achieved.”

What was Mbabazi saying? Perhaps it is not very clear, the fact that the Prime Minister usually communicates effectively notwithstanding.

So we sought to clarify the government’s position on the matter with James Baba, the state minister for Internal Affairs, where the police force falls. “The Prime Minister made a statement about it yesterday,” Baba said, “You go and check the Hansard (Parliament record) because I cannot contradict what the Prime Minister said.”

We then turned to Wafula to check whether he understood the answer to his question, he only offered an explanation of Mbabazi’s circumstances: “Of course the Prime Minister cannot respond frankly because he is an interested party in the issue.”

Wafula says the opposition in Parliament will address the matter more substantively in the coming weeks, by bringing a motion in which they “shall push for his (Kayihura’s) resignation.”

Bringing the motion is one thing and having it carried is quite another, however. And Wafula knows it. He admits that it may be difficult for Parliament to carry a motion against Kayihura if President Museveni has not willed it, “especially now that President Museveni has been cosy with (the majority) NRM MPs.”

In connection to this, the state-controlled New Vision reported last week that NRM MPs were each paid Shs4m per sub-county to campaign in favour of the Kyankwanzi resolution in which they seek to endorse Museveni as the party’s sole presidential candidate for 2016.

The MPs, moving on a proposal by northern youth MP Evelyn Anite, asked the NRM’s Central Executive Committee to gazette Museveni as the party’s sole presidential candidate for 2016 in light of the perceived plot by Mbabazi to stage an upset.
Wafula says that for this reason, it may be hard to convince NRM MPs to “condemn Kayihura for serving the same master they are serving.” He insists that they will try to throw out Kayihura, however.
Wafula’s boss, Muntu, however, says much depends on Kayihura. “I don’t know whether Kale will have the courage (to resign),” Muntu says, adding, “Now that it has come out in the open that Kale is an active politician, he should put aside the police and army uniforms and join the NRM party.”

Will Museveni sack Kayihura?
By resigning from the Forces, Muntu says, Kayihura will “save President Museveni the responsibility” of having to sack him. But should Kayihura not deem it fit to resign, Muntu adds, then the appointing authority would have to sack him.

This will not happen, however, Muntu reckons. He says he knows “for sure” that President Museveni will not sack Kayihura over the leaked tapes. How Muntu knows that, he does not say.

He, however, served in the army under Museveni’s leadership for more than 20 years and retired after being army commander for almost a decade. Muntu also does not say what definite measures they will take.

His UPC counterpart, Olara Otunnu, goes one step further to reveal that the leaders of the campaign on free and fair elections had a meeting on Wednesday, chiefly to discuss how to approach the Kale Leaks.
But that is all Otunnu was willing to reveal at the moment. He said they will have a joint press conference on Tuesday during which they will announce their position on the “Kale Leaks”.

What Otunnu and his colleagues will say on Tuesday, notwithstanding the question, whether Kayihura leaves police or stays, will highly depend on Museveni, says Moses Khisa, a PhD candidate of political science in the United States.

Khisa says the leaked tapes “have fully exposed what many Ugandans have been saying: that Kayihura is not a professional police officer but a highly partisan operative who was sent to the Uganda Police Force to secure the regime of General Museveni.”

He claims that Kayihura’s appointment to the job in 2005 was chiefly to take the police force away from “the able leadership of a professional officer, General Edward Katumba Wamala,” and that as a result, what Kayihura does has “at least the tacit approval” of President Museveni.

Khisa adds that for the above reason, “the leaked tapes might do little to dent the credibility of Kayihura before his master” since he “is still one of the most loyal and enthusiastic military operatives at the disposal of General Museveni.”

Khisa says, in summary, that Kayihura is “precisely the right person Museveni wants in that position: loyal, enthusiastic, committed but unprofessional.” He adds a caveat, though: “But his (Kayihura’s) continued stay at the helm of the UPF can only exacerbate the fissures in intelligence and security circles.”

Whether Khisa’s assessment of what Kayihura’s continued stay in office would mean for this country rhymes with Museveni’s reading of the situation remains to be seen.

The only thing which is clear now is that the Kale Leaks have caused tremors through the establishment.