When Bible catches fire, Museveni’s school grades and covering your father’s nakedness

There is something about the bottle that has never changed over the ages: it makes you do things you sooner regret. So one morning the fifth or sixth bottle told one fellow that the best thing he could do with himself at that time was to don Adam’s Suit. 
That’s how it came to pass that a little fellow, just idly passing time, walking about the home, found his father, drunk as a skunk, his snores shaking the rafters, as he lay on his back, all his anatomy bare for all and sundry to see.
In a show of stupidity, the lad had a good laugh and broadcast the news. His brothers, older and wiser, got a bed sheet, went to their father facing backwards and covered him. They refused to see their father’s nakedness; they chose to cover it. Sounds familiar? I think so too! 
This is not a very nice time to be chairperson of the Electoral Commission in Uganda, because an election is just around the corner and even the children deep in the village are convinced you are just a quisling of the ruling government and can never deliver a free and fair election. 
And even if you bought them sugarcane and sweets, the kids (take any) will assure you that you were appointed for the sole purpose of stealing the election and you are Public Enemy Number One and that if you  touched a Bible, it would promptly catch fire, because you are such a liar and falsifier. That is the fate an otherwise great and very pleasant human being, Dr Badru Kiggundu suffered when he was EC supremo.
Current EC chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama is carrying that baggage just now and it hasn’t helped matters that it is in his regime that some really clever chaps showed up, flashed the Access to Information Act in his face and demanded to have a copy of President Museveni’s academic documents. 
Byabakama, quite rightly – and also, very wrongly – (see?) said ‘no’; which put him in a pickle because he had just allowed the maverick lawyer-cum-serial-plaintiff Male Mabirizi, tipsy with malicious intent, to access the academic documents of Museveni’s rival, the young Bobi Wine – the boy who is causing the President high blood pressure, assorted heart complications and sleepless nights, complete with a chronic headache. 
That Mabirizi chap will soon sue the Lord for bad weather or seek multifarious declarations and injunctions against the snake for tempting Eve with an apple.
Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States once joked that he was lucky he became president; for at that moment, his school grades became “classified information”. Read into that all you want, but Ugandan statutory law does not actually protect Museveni’s academic documents; Museveni’s privacy is guaranteed by our societal norms– a good son covers his father’s nakedness, regardless! If he is your father, he is a man and let that be sufficient unto you; it is not for you to see the details of his anatomy.
Legally, Justice Byabakama was probably wrong; but morally and in our cultural context, he did just about right. 
Under the law, a court order could compel the EC to release the President’s papers; but that’s definitely one of the sad times that enforcing the law would reinforce injustice, for you can be sure social media would have passed the papers around like cake at a wedding. No matter what the grades are, every comedy outfit would have found reason or excuse to make a parody out of it all in songs and sayings.
The war against President Museveni must remain political and principled, not personal. If it sinks to making fun of him or his wife and kids that’s despicable and counter-productive because it lowers the quality of debate, presents the Opposition as shallow and paints President Museveni as the most viable choice. 
This is Africa; and in Africa, a good son covers his father’s nakedness, even if they don’t see eye to eye.

Mr Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda     
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