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Uganda on trial before court martial

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Chief justice Alphonse Owiny-Dollo, President Museveni and ULS President Isaac Ssemakadde. PHOTO/COMBO

By some coincidence, November seems to be Dr Kizza Besigye’s encounter with the military in which he was once a serving officer.

In November 2005, days after his return from a four-year exile in South Africa, Dr Besigye was arrested on the outskirts of Kampala, triggering off three days of rioting in the city and pockets in other Ugandan towns.

This was followed by two months of drama, with Dr Besigye produced before the High Court, granted bail, only to be re-arrested by an army commando squad, and was even nominated as the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) presidential candidate for the 2006 General Election while in Luzira Upper Prison.
This November has seen a near-exact replica of the events of 19 years ago.

This, alone, shows how long the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government has been in power, that a baby born in November 2005 when Besigye was first arrested, is now of a voting age and yet politically, nothing has changed.

We are still discussing procedural matters such as whether a person being tried in a civilian court can be concurrently tried in a military court.

As it was 19 years ago, the State is determined to have its way and the courts of law are showing their lack of mettle and inability to defend their independence.

In a letter on Thursday, December 12, President Museveni argued in favour of trying civilians in the court martial, saying the military court played an important role in reducing gun-related crimes.

Somebody asked on the social media app X that same day in response to the President’s letter: “If a civilian caught with a gun or who uses a gun in a crime should be tried before the military court, should the trial of Molly Katanga, the woman accused of shooting dead her husband Henry Katanga, not have taken place at the court martial?”

Why was her trial held before the civilian court and Besigye’s, a retired army officer, held before the court martial?
The previous day, December 11, the Supreme Court ruled that the courts of judicature have no jurisdiction to handle appeals against General Court Martial verdicts.

But in his letter, President Museveni stated that “…the court martial system is a subordinate one to the general courts of the whole country.”

The question now is, will the Supreme Court stand by its ruling or will it amend its position in light of President Museveni’s written opinion?

How do Uganda’s high-ranking judges perceive themselves?
The Legislature has clearly demonstrated itself as simply a rubber stamp of State House.
Can the Judiciary prove to be different?

Are they, in their own minds, members of the third branch of State, alongside and independent of the Executive and the Legislative, or do they feel themselves civil servants of the Ministry of Justice and subservient to the Executive?

The Supreme Court’s ruling means the General Court Martial is, in a sense, Uganda’s true Supreme Court.
Because what it did was a Pontius Pilate, washing its hands of responsibility over future appeals to its final authority.

It will tempt the State to plant army uniforms or weapons on political opponents, human rights activists, and media critics, who will be arrested, tried by the court martial and sentenced to jail or death with no further appeal.
This is the crux of Uganda’s political crisis.

Journalist Simon Kaggwa Njala, writing on X last Thursday, said: “There is a politician friend who was recently in prison. He told me that a number of old men with huge chunks of land are languishing in prison on trumped-up charges of rape. Most of these charges are a conspiracy between the powerful and some judicial officers to grab their land.”

If the Judiciary does not take a firm, principled stand on these important matters, among other things, it will show what outcome to expect in the wake of the likely 2026 post-election Supreme Court petition.

One wonders what the Kenyan politician and lawyer, Martha Karua, thinks of Uganda. First, Besigye was abducted while he was an invited guest at her book launch in Nairobi last month.

Then when she came to Kampala to act as his lead counsel in his court martial hearing, she witnessed all the embarrassing shabbiness that is NRM Uganda.

Civilians tried in military courts. The Uganda Law Council denying her a temporary permit to practice in Uganda on the dubious grounds that she was not in Kampala to act as Dr Besigye’s lawyer but to play politics.

Coming from a country that in 2017 overturned the outcome of the presidential election, and which in mid-2024 saw days of demonstrations by Kenya’s youth, Karua experiences a neighbouring country still stuck in the old 1970s Big Man era where the head of state is both the law and above the law, and where the population has been cowered into passivity.

Technically, the Supreme Court was right in its interpretation of the law as it currently is.
Granting the Supreme Court the powers to be the final authority of appeal can only be done by statutes written into the law and in this, Parliament will have to take a lead role – a Parliament whose orientation is well known.

The criminal justice system and the legal profession in Uganda stands on trial in 2024 in a way it has seldom been since 2005.

All three of Uganda’s branches of State are on trial.
The only vocal corner of the legal community still taking a firm stance on matters of the law is the Uganda Law Society under its cantankerous new president Isaac Ssemakadde.

Judging by the direction events are taking in the country, Ssemakadde’s rude language might soon be the least of Uganda’s problems and sources of embarrassment.

Social media’s own erratic and rude tone might be one of the last remaining pockets of true, open, uncensored debate of national matters in Uganda.

Other than a blanket shutting down of the Internet, social media is the only part of Uganda that the State cannot do anything about.

Ugandan democracy, the independence of the courts, and the credibility of the NRM government are all on trial before the court martial.