
Democratic Alliance leader Mathias Mpuuga addresses the media at their offices in Namirembe, Kampala, in December 2024. PHOTO | ABUBAKER LUBOWA
Mr Mathias Mpuuga Nsamba, the former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LOP), has been waiting for an official response from the Speaker of Parliament, Ms Anita Among, for the last four months or so regarding his request to be afforded time to present his proposals for electoral reform.
Mr Mpuuga already made public a series of amendments that he wishes to see made to the Political Parties and Organizations Amendment Bill, the Local Government Amendment Bill, the Referendum and Other Provisions Bill, the Parliamentary Elections Bill, the Electoral Commission Amendment, the Presidential Elections Amendment, and a Constitutional Amendment, which he says he deems essential for the future of democracy.
By the close of business on Friday, it was unclear whether he would be accorded such an opportunity.
Speaking to Sunday Monitor earlier in the week, Mr Chris Obore, Parliament’s Director for Communications and Public Affairs, indicated that the Speaker had not yet found a slot within which to fit Mr Mpuuga.
“The Business Committee predetermines the business of the House. When the Speaker exercises her authority, she does so depending on how much she has on her schedule. She will consider Hon Mathias Mpuuga’s matter as and when she finds the space on her schedule,” Mr Obore said.
If the revised roadmap for the 2025/2026 General Elections which was released by the EC on July 30, 2024, is to go by, nomination of presidential candidates is scheduled for October 2nd and October 3rd this year and elections before March next year.
That means that any reforms or laws have to be come before October.
However, if you asked me, the MP for Nyendo-Mukungwe Division in Masaka City is not your run-of-the-mill politician or legislator. He is not only a seasoned legislator who has been in the house for over a decade now, which makes it highly probable that he knows his way around, parliament, but has also been known to be friends with Ms Among.
Besides, he is a Commissioner of Parliament and a member of the business committee of parliament, which as Mr Obore pointed out, decides parliament’s business.
If he and Ms Among are not playing games for purposes that are yet to be established, it should ordinarily be simple for him to get himself onto that order paper. However, if he is not finding it possible it must be because there is a higher force that is standing in the way.
Executive Awol?
Speaking to this publication during an earlier interview in which he was responding to accusations that parliament “takes a very selective approach on which reforms to adopt and which one not to adopt,” Mr Obore said that reforms can only be initiated by the executive arm of government.
“Since when did it become parliament's role to initiate constitutional amendments or electoral reforms? Do these activists know the roles of different arms of government or do they think parliament is the alpha and omega?” Mr Obore asked back then.
The problem though, is that the executive has been seemingly away without official leave amidst all the cacophony of calls for reforms.
It is only Mr Norbert Mao, the Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister who has seemed keen on the idea of reforms, but the last time he spoke about them with so much gusto was early in October last year when he hit back at Mr Mpuuga who had earlier accused him of making false promises concerning the proposed reforms.
“Mpuuga should stop using my name to push his agenda. Ugandans need to be patient; the reforms are coming,” Minister Mao said back then.
It was not possible to talk to Mr Mao for this article as his known mobile telephone numbers were not reachable, but whereas the Minister promised that “the reforms are coming” it would appear that the preferred courier of choice was a tortoise. Tortoises are known to be slow-moving with an average walking speed of 0.2kms to 0.5kms per hour.
Chances are however that Mr Museveni and the NRM government were never going to embrace the kind of reforms that Mr Mao always alluded to.
It should be remembered that whereas Mr Mao had told the public that the cooperation agreement that his faction of the Democratic Party (DP) entered into with the ruling NRM was partly about managing the political transition, Mr Museveni was at hand in the middle of October 2022, to dismiss the claim.
“I want to make this clear, that political transition was not part of the cooperation agreement so whatever Mao says, says it for his political interests,” Museveni said.
Diminishing chances
However, even as questions continue to arise about whether Mr Mpuuga or Minister Mao will manage to table any reforms before parliament, chances that they will manage to pull it off are diminishing by the day because some people close to Mr Museveni do not think them necessary. That thinking might be indicative of what Mr Museveni thinks.
Mr Moses Byaruhanga, the Senior Presidential Advisor in charge of political mobilization is one of them. He argues that the NRM has already done a lot of work in as far as especially electoral reforms are concerned.
“The NRM carried out the necessary reforms long ago. For the benefit of, especially the young people, the reforms we carried out are: creating a voter register and registration of all those willing to register, displaying the register for anyone to scrutinize it and where there is anyone not eligible to vote either in that area or by age those can be removed, nomination days are announced ahead of time,” Mr Byaruhanga says.
Mr Byaruhanga argues that some of these reforms are in contrast with what happened in 1980 when nominations were held on one day between 8 a.m. and midday. There are reports that some aspirants were held at roadblocks and only released after nominations had been closed.
Mr Byaruhanga names courts giving election petitions priority, counting votes at the polling station as opposed to doing it at the district headquarters as was the case in 1980 and provisions for every candidates to have two polling agents who should be present during the counting of the votes cast and sign the result declaration forms, which enables the candidates to tally their votes and compare with what the EC declares as some of the other key reforms that have been carried.
Mr Byaruhanga concludes that in light of such an array of reforms, he does not think it necessary for more reforms to be carried out.
“If others have in mind what needs to be reformed let them bring them for debate in parliament which is mandated to amend the constitution either by itself or in the case of some articles parliament amends the constitution together with the district councils and there are those articles whose amendment requires a referendum,” Mr Byaruhanga says.
One however wonders whether it is even possible for parliament to carry out any meaningful debate on the kind of reforms that sections of the populace have been calling for.
Kampala's lawyer, Mr Dan Wandera Ogalo, who was a member of the Constituent Assembly (CA) that made the 1995 constitution and represented Bukooli North in the 6th Parliament does not think it possible for meaningful reforms can be realised through parliament.
“We should now stop this pretence that you can carry out reforms through an amendment through parliament. We have tried it three times and we have failed. 2011, 2015, 2019 and we have failed,” Mr Ogalo says.
Meddling
The man who represented Uganda in the East African Legislative Assembly on a ticket of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), says that all previous attempts at carrying out meaningful reform have always been scuttled by the NRM and Mr Museveni.
In 2005, he said, parliament considered an array of reforms, but the NRM chose only those that benefitted it and set the rest aside. It should be remembered that this particular set of reforms led to the scrapping of term limits.
Subsequent proposals for reforms, which included proposals from political parties and civil society, he said, have always been handled with “a consistent approach of ignoring that there is no consensus and picking up only those that will ensure that there is regime continuity”.
Hurdles
It would from the foregoing look like there are very many hurdles and obstacles in the way of the proposed electoral and constitutional reforms, but Mr Ogalo thinks that the single biggest obstacle to any kind of reforms is the person of President Museveni.
“These reforms that people are talking about will not happen because there is no political will and apart from Mr Museveni who else can be an obstacle to those reforms? There is no other person, it all ends with him. If he says I want genuine consensus, let people go back on the drawing table and reroute the country on a proper course it would happen,” Mr Ogalo says.
Dr Livingstone Sewanyana, the Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) agrees that it would be best for Uganda if Mr Museveni acted along the lines of what Mr Ogalo is suggesting, but he at the same time does not think that Mr Museveni will be doing so.
What is left, he says, is for divine intervention.
“Virtually all possibilities of building a political consensus have been explored without any answer. So I think it will require a combination of factors. One will be divine intervention and then the other one will be the inevitable political determinants, the things which will occur whether you want it or not,” Dr Sewanyana says.
His conclusion points to an increasing sense of hopelessness and with it a sense that chances of reforms are dwindling and pretty fast.