Kiggundu exit speaks to need for term limits

Some incurably optimistic Ugandans are hoping for a new dawn now that Mr Badru Kiggundu is leaving the Electoral Commission. They are in the minority.

We can expect no change unless the playing rules are radically revised.

By many accounts, Kiggundu’s commission has been remarkably uninspiring. In many respects, it deserves all the vilification. Even the usually reticent courts found the political thuggery prevalent in the handling of the last three general elections exceptionally reprehensible.

Kiggundu made his bed, and so shall he lie in it for posterity to be scandalised when they read about the travesty.

Whatever little good may have come of his 14 years in situ shall be interred with his tattered legacy. The perception of electoral evil is what will endure in our memory.

This tragedy should not be seen in isolation though for it is a symptom of a more perverse reality: The constitutional misnomer in Article 60 which gave the President power to appoint the Electoral Commission.

This lugubrious incongruity spectacularly clashes with Article 62 that proclaims that the commission shall be independent, and not be subject to the direction or control of any person or authority in the performance of its functions.

Under Kiggundu, it was implicit to the public that the EC served at the pleasure of the appointing authority.

It’s this unfortunate state of affairs that the Opposition laments. It has made a laughing stock out of the institution’s mandate as envisaged in Article 61(1)a which is to organise regular, free and fair elections.

For as long a sitting President retains the constitutional authority to appoint the commission, full enjoyment of Article 61(1)a will remain a mirage. A President harbours a conflict interest in who will referee elections in which he or she shall be running. This constitutional contradiction must be re-considered.

Among the many other corrections required as part of the wider package of electoral reforms, is a restoration of presidential term limits. An independent EC, whose appointment is not dependent on the president, as demanded by the Opposition, must be supported by more protections.

Just as term limits have relieved Ugandans of Mr Kiggundu, presidential term limits will end the folly of ‘eternal president’ -- a fixture whose many weaknesses include a potential to interfere with electoral processes.

A president unconstrained by term limits is more likely to cast his or her shadow over the EC regardless of whatever declarations as to its independence.

We must correct the mistake of 2005 when Parliament was manipulated into abolishing term limits.