Why government, parties are scared of Independents

Attorney General William Byaruhanga finally tabled before Parliament proposed amendments to the electoral laws in the run up to the 2021 elections.
The contents of the five Bills are still fuzzy as they were not shared by MPs as is the practice, and Parliament promised but did not share copies of the same with journalists by close of the week.

Gleaning from those who participated in preparing the documents and those who have looked at them, the issue of Independents, those who decide to compete for MP slots without being sponsored by any party, has been flagged as one of the most controversial.

Sources say the government proposes that for someone who has been a member of a party and intends to stand for MP in 2021 and beyond as an Independent candidate, they ought to have resigned from their party one year before the election is called. With nominations for the 2021 elections set to happen around October next year, MPs who intend to leave their parties to run as Independents would have about three months to quit their current parties should the proposal become law.

The proposal is contained in the Political Parties and Organisations Amendment Bill No. 20 of 2019, one of the five Bills tabled by Mr Byaruhanga.
The other Bills are the Presidential Elections Amendment Bill No 17 of 2019; the Parliamentary Elections Amendment Bill No. 18 of 2019; the Electoral Commission Amendment Bill No 19 of 2019; and the Local Government Elections Amendment Bill No 21 of 2019.
War on independents
The war on Independents started in Inter-Party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD) in May or earlier. It was announced then that the parties had agreed to support a law regarding Independents.

The proposal, according to communication from IPOD, sought to give effect to Article 72(5) of the Constitution, which mandated legislators to enact a law to “regulate the manner of participation in (elections) and financing of elections by individuals seeking political office as Independent candidates.”

Much of the discussion in IPOD centered around blocking members who participate in internal party primaries and lose from running for Parliament as Independents. The heads of the parties under IPOD – National Resistance Movement (NRM), Democratic Party (DP), Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) and Jeema – eventually met at Entebbe in what was dubbed the second IPOD summit and agreed to enact a law on Independents. Whereas the leadership of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) skipped the Entebbe summit, as it did the first one in Munyonyo, near Kampala, the resolutions of the summit were generated from proposals that had been generated by secretaries general of all the parties, including FDC. The party did not disassociate itself from the proposal after the summit.

Danger with independents
Each of the parties has its fears, either from the past or imaginations of how the future may pan out.
The ruling NRM, in the lead up to the 2011 and 2016 elections, experienced internal turmoil over primaries for MP slots. Its internal elections to select candidates were characterised by massive accusations of rigging, which led to violence in different parts of the country. Disgruntled candidates who felt that they had been rigged out in the primaries then contested as Independents, and many of them won parliamentary seats.

NRM has since made some amendments to its rules, introducing lining up behind candidates in its primaries to reduce disputes over results, among other reasons. Whereas this has created hope that the party’s upcoming primaries could end up being fairer than the previous two, it has created a new fear.

Party members we talked to say that some influential party members who have been ‘winning’ through rigging could this time shun the primaries and decide to run as Independents, hoping to manipulate the national election which will be by secret vote as the ones before.
To stem the possibility of NRM members running as Independents as they continue to ally with the party, sources say, the party leadership feels that the law on independents could come in handy.

In the FDC, there were a number of disagreements over selection of candidates over the years. The party leadership did not conduct primaries to select MP candidates in many of the areas, causing discomfort in some cases.

For instance, in the newly created Kamuli Municipality, Ms Proscovia Naikoba was fancying her chances in the lead up to the 2016 elections. She cultivated the constituency as veteran politician Salamu Musumba, who was at the time the chairperson of Kamuli District, pondered her next move. Ms Musumba was torn between running again for the LC5 slot, challenging Speaker Rebecca Kadaga for the district woman seat, going back to challenge for Bugabula South, which she represented before, or going for the relative easy pickings that Kamuli Municipality seemed to be.

In the meantime, Ms Naikoba was focused on challenging NRM’s Rehema Watongola, and FDC had even given her money to clear the nomination fees. At the final minute, Ms Musumba decided that she would run in Kamuli Municipality, and the FDC party leadership took a late decision to withdraw the card from Ms Naikoba and handed it to Ms Musumba. Ms Naikoba decided to run as an Independent. In the end, they both lost to Ms Watongola.

Within FDC, there has been disquiet over how the party card is handed out in the lead up to elections, with a number of members alleging favouritism, while the party leadership stuck to a practice which some members see as undemocratic, where seniority is treasured to the extent that less experienced members are often not allowed to freely compete with experienced members in primaries

Similar, and sometimes worse, accusations are levelled against the leadership of the DP, which has seen a number of its senior members run for different slots as Independents.

Some of the members, like Kampala Lord Mayor Lukwago, don’t recognise the leadership of the party and are reluctant to subject themselves to it in order get endorsement, while others allege favouritism in the way the slots are doled out.

Party leaders speak out
FDC’s take: In light of the proposal to have members leave parties one year ahead of elections if they intend to run as Independents, only the leader of FDC, Mr Patrick Amuriat, has a problem. The leadership of DP, UPC and NRM think it would be a great step to bolster the development of parties.
Mr Amuriat said: “The provision is restrictive to individual members of the parties as it infringes on their constitutional right and liberty to belong or not to belong as and when they want because it requires them to get clearance from the party leadership. It is also restrictive to the parties. Much as I am a party leader who would want to find a way of avoiding a situation where members leave the party, I don’t think it is in the interest of the parties to have such a law.”

Mr Amuriat’s party has been tested on this ground in recent times. When Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu announced he had left FDC last year, there were fears that a number of party leaders would follow him into his new party. These fears still abound.
The party secretary general, Mr Nandala Mafabi, in fact, issued a circular requiring members to declare their allegiance and warning of consequences for those who didn’t. It is not clear where this ended.

UPC’s take: Away from Mr Amuriat’s concerns, Mr Michael Osinde, the UPC party spokesperson, says of the proposal to have members intending to run as Independents leave current parties one year ahead of elections:
“The provision will reduce tensions and conflicts within the political parties. The secretary general should be in a position to clear a candidate early. That way, one will not contest the party primaries, then return to contest the general elections as an Independent candidate after failing at the primaries. It will cure that. UPC went through some turbulence during the last general election when members of the party joined the Democratic Alliance (TDA). We had to dismiss some member.”

DP says...: Mr Gerald Siranda, the secretary general of DP, gives another perspective: “This is something that was extensively addressed by IPOD. We picked it from the National Consultative Council, which comprises 32 political parties. The concern was that while we chose to return to a multiparty dispensation, the conduct of some of the people has not been helping multipartyism to grow. People claim to be life members of a party, but their actions show that they belong elsewhere. This will give the parties the time to prepare another person to contest or even to identify a candidate because in some of our places, it is very hard to find a candidate and also promote that candidate among the voters.”

NRM’s take: Mr Richard Todwong, the NRM party deputy secretary general, says of the proposal: “I think it is a 50-50, but for the political parties, I think it will help in the maintenance of discipline in the parties. There has been a lot of indiscipline. Members of political parties who have been losing party primaries have been contesting as Independent candidates, claiming that they were cheated without even denouncing their parties.

This will help in that results of internal elections will be respected. There is, however, need for further discussion on this, especially on the stage at which one becomes an Independent.”

[email protected]