Museveni addressees judges' annual conference

The 2019 Annual Judges' conference

Excerpts of Museveni’s address at the annual judge's conference

People say we opposed Amin because he was killing people. We did not know that Amin was killing people.

For us, we are nationalists. We are also Pan-Africanists. We cannot survive without thinking like Africans.

By killing people, Amin was playing in our hands.

It was a mistake for somebody like Ben Kiwanuka (former prime minister and Chief Justice) to work in Amin's government. In which fundamental direction was he (Amin) taking us.

We defeated Amin's colonial army and created a new one. That's why Uganda has peace now.

We are not candidates of UN for security. We defeated Joseph Kony and other rebels who tried to challenge us. Look across Africa, in countries like Congo, people are dying like flies.
UN is there supervising chaos and conserving terrorism.

Judiciary must decide which side to follow; the judiciary of the colonial state or the judiciary of fundamental change!
You may take for granted what I’m telling you but it has very serious implications.

Uganda cannot settle down if we do not settle the ideological direction of the country.
UPDF has been able to provide security of Uganda and some of our brothers in the neighboring countries with a budget of $439m a year.

If you compare with the defence budget of other countries, ours is too small.

On understaffed judiciary
You are the only ones understaffed. Even the police are also grappling with limited man power.

If we had all the policemen we wanted then we would have no money to work on roads.

You can’t increase manpower because we may not have money to pay them.

You cannot convince me to stop working on the roads or electricity to enhance salary. I cannot stop. That’s suicidal.

If you want to manage scarcity, please invite me. I’m an expert on how to manage scarce resources. I went to the bush with only 27 guns but managed to defeat an army of 60,000 soldiers.

Other than increasing judicial officers’ numbers, I would rather we concentrate on the few we we have and we find ways of how to better remunerate them before we think about numbers.
Please don’t enter the trap of too many human beings before knowing how to manage them.
I agree with empowering the few people we have with equipment and remuneration as opposed to increasing the numbers.

Land issues
I’m glad the chief justice has taken a tough stand against land issues.
I was about to confront the magistrate myself. We were about to reach the crisis point.
The people are you are evicting are my people. We fought with them.