Besigye plots coalition to block lifting age limit

Kampala. Four-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye planned to spend the whole of yesterday locked up in meetings with different players opposed to the lifting the 75-year age cap for presidential candidates, Saturday Monitor has learnt.

The Opposition leader was campaigning for the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party candidates in the Iganga Woman MP by-election and in the new district of Namisindwa when hundreds of ruling party MPs converged in the conference hall of Parliament and resolved to table a private member’s Bill to lift the presidential age limit.

The move took most of the country by surprise and our sources say Dr Besigye immediately started working his contacts and arranged meetings for Friday to discuss the way forward.
Dr Besigye fears that there will perhaps be more drama if the plotters against the clause on the presidential age limit decide that following the usual process of passing a Bill will be so protracted, and perhaps lead to more resistance.

Ordinarily, the private member intending to table the Bill will have to seek leave of Parliament, and if granted, be given 45 days to draft the Bill and seek a Certificate of Financial Implications from the Ministry of Finance.
After the Bill is tabled, at least another 45 days would have to elapse as a committee scrutinises it and hears from members of the public, and then the Bill will have to be read a second and third time.

The fear is that to circumvent that process, the plotters could apply to suspend the rules of procedure in this regard and quickly stampede the Bill through Parliament.
“With the regime and Mr Museveni thirsty for power, this is a real possibility,” Masaka Municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga said. “Their (NRM) biggest pride is in numbers; not logical legislation.”
Mr Mpuuga neither denied nor confirmed invitation to meet with Dr Besigye when we put the question to him. He, however, said: “We are trying to get together the voices of reason from both sides of the isle.”

Mr Mpuuga worked with Dr Besigye to set up what they called Activists for Change (A4C), which coordinated the walk-to-work protests after the disputed 2011 elections.
The protests paralysed Kampala and some towns of central Uganda, especially Masaka, leading to a number of deaths and a very brutal attack by a policeman on Dr Besigye that left him almost blinded and requiring treatment in Nairobi, Kenya.

“A group of people cannot sit in a room and legislate a life presidency for Uganda because the whole essence of the 1995 Constitution was to prevent exactly that,” Mr Mpuuga added.
Mr Mpuuga was among a group of Opposition players who had supported Dr Besigye in the past but backed former prime minister Amama Mbabazi in the 2016 elections. We have learnt that they have since made up with the FDC party founder and have been working together on the nationwide campaign on land dubbed “my land, my life”.

Museveni’s decoy?
Plans to lift the age limit have been afoot since Mr Museveni was sworn in for a fifth term in May 2016. Shortly after this 10th Parliament started work last year, for instance, Nakifuma County MP Kafeero Ssekitooleko attempted to seek leave of Parliament to draft a private member’s Bill on lifting age limit.

Speaker Rebecca Kadaga blocked it, saying the Executive is expected to table a comprehensive Constitution Amendment Bill as directed by the Supreme Court in its ruling on the presidential election filed last year by former prime minister Amama Mbabazi.
A number of other MPs, most notably the yellow-clad Ibrahim Abiriga of Arua Municipality and Investment State Minister Evelyn Anite, voiced support for the amendment. More underground work ensued.

On July 9, 2017, this newspaper reported that the planners of the amendment had set end of 2018 as the cut off time to push it through, so that by the time the 2021 elections come, the amendment will no longer be part of the conversation.
We further reported that the team had been sent to Burundi to study what had gone wrong when president Pierre Nkrunziza pushed through his third term and turmoil ensued. The idea was to pick lessons to ensure it is not repeated here when the change happens. The plotters of the age limit removal, our sources say, have a conflict plan ready.

But as all this happened, sources close to Dr Besigye say President Museveni acted in surprising ways towards Dr Besigye.
Regarding the subject of talks that was mooted by various groups after the disputed elections, for instance, the sources say Mr Museveni agreed to most of the conditions that Dr Besigye set for the talks to happen. The conditions include auditing the 2016 elections, which the Opposition leader claims he won.
An intermediary moved back-and-forth between State House and Dr Besigye’s home in Kasangati for a number of months, always carrying preliminary documents about the talks. As an indication that Mr Museveni perhaps wanted the talks most, he would be the first to append his signature on the documents, which would then be delivered to Dr Besigye for signature.

Our sources indicate that some preliminary documents were indeed signed, most notably a commitment by Mr Museveni to respect Dr Besigye’s personal rights. It is most likely for this reason, our sources indicate, that the Opposition leader has not been held in a police cell for a number of months, including when he was on two occasions involved in a stand-off with the police in Nakaseke, among other incidents.

Again on the talks front, the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda and the Elders’ Forum, working together with select groups of civil society, are pushing for a national dialogue to resolve the political impasse in the country.
But Dr Besigye insists that no talks can take place if they don’t involve President Museveni leaving power. Changing the Constitution to remove the age limit for the president, therefore, would in effect kill any prospect of such talks.

Did Dr Besigye see it coming?

The issue of the Constitution being changed to allow Mr Museveni to run again in 2021, came up during the campaigns for the 2016 elections, and Dr Besigye told voters that his former boss, if re-elected in 2016, would embark on changing the Constitution to rule on beyond 2021.

“When someone is already an adult, he cannot change,” Dr Besigye said at a rally in Budadiri West in Sironko District in October 2015. “Do you think Museveni can stop telling lies now? … I wonder whether [senior presidential advisor on media John] Nagenda thinks there is any Ugandan who can still listen to Museveni and his last term (talk).”

He was referring to earlier statements by Mr Museveni, like in the lead up to the 2001 elections, that he would not run again, which were in the end ignored.
In Sironko, Dr Besigye was reacting to statements by Mr Nagenda, which were carried by Daily Monitor, that Mr Museveni would abide by the dictates of the constitutional age limit and not seek re-election in 2021 because he will already have surpassed the 75-year ceiling.

In an interview published by this newspaper last month, Mr Nagenda reiterated his wish for the President to stand down after this term, urging him to identify a successor.
The debate on whether Mr Museveni would not agree to change the Constitution this time was kicked off when the question was put to him during his campaign tour of West Nile.

Mr Museveni said then: “He [journalist] was saying the Constitution talks of 75 [as the age limit]. Now, what am I planning to do? I will follow the Constitution.”
In an earlier interview with NTV’s Patrick Kamara, Mr Museveni had been more unequivocal while answering the question. Responding to a question on whether he would run for president after he clocks 75, Mr Museveni said, “certainly not.”

But when a similar question was put to the President by Daily Monitor’s Solomon Arinaitwe during a press conference at State House Entebbe on Thursday, it went unanswered.
Cynics who believe that Mr Museveni will sanction a change in the Constitution to be able to rule beyond 2021, base their belief on the events that saw the Constitution changed in 2005 to remove the two-term limit and the way for Mr Museveni to run again in 2006. Mr Museveni then remained quiet about the matter until the amendment was passed and he assented to it.

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