History does not repeat itself, only  foolish people repeat its mistakes

Author: Daniel K Kalinaki. PHOTO/FILE. 

What you need to know:

  •  There are many other cases in our history to show the folly of tampering with the presumption of innocence that is in-built in the right to bail.

On February 24, 1966, Prime Minister Apollo Milton Obote, accompanied by an armed escort, burst into a room where Cabinet was meeting. He ordered the arrest of five ministers who were planning an investigation into corruption around the PM and his then-right-hand man, a one Idi Amin Dada.

The ministers were shunted off to Karamoja under a colonial-era law allowing the removal of “undesirable” persons. They applied to court for an order of habeas corpus which was denied by a local High Court judge but allowed by the East African Court of Appeal.

 As soon as they were released from custody, the five ministers were rearrested under colonial Emergency Regulations, then kept away under a new Deportation Act which one of the ministers, Grace Ibingira, had contributed to writing, and which a court subsequently ruled was legal. 

 It is not clear how many MPs today are familiar with the events of 1966, 1967 and 1971 and their contribution to instability in Uganda. But many are old enough to recall that in the 2016 presidential election, the police used the Public Order Management Act to break up campaign rallies of several opposition candidates, including a one John Patrick Amama Mbabazi.

 In happier times Mr Mbabazi had helped push through the law which essentially took the garbage that the Constitutional Court had thrown out of our law books restricting political activities and the right of assembly, and shoved them back into statute. Both ministers were relatively good lawyers, poor politicians and bad students of history.
 
If you want Members of Parliament to amend the Constitution to deny bail to suspects, meeting them on the matter when two of their colleagues remain in custody despite a court order giving them temporary freedom is perhaps not a great idea.

 But the head of the Executive is so used to wiping his feet on the legislative rubber mat that this small detail either did not register, or was not expected to feature in the minds of ruling party MPs. Yet MPs have previously put on such shows of spine, only to collapse under the weight of financial inducements, presidential charm or terror. 

 We must appeal to a higher sense of self-interest – their own freedom – in order to sustain this resistance. There are many other cases in our history to show the folly of tampering with the presumption of innocence that is in-built in the right to bail.

 Over the years many MPs have found themselves in state custody for various reasons. Some, like Omara Atubo, Reagan Okumu, Michael Nyeko Ocula and others, it turned out, had been arrested on politically motivated but trumped-up charges that were eventually dismissed. Others like Arua MP Akbar Godi, who was arrested over the murder of his wife, were convicted and jailed. 

 To lump all suspects together and shift the burden of innocence away from the state to them, as any amendments to the law would in effect do, is a fundamental departure from our constitutional order, common law and common sense.

 If MPs do not find history instructive, then at least let them examine the argument that murder suspects are released on bail, provoke residents when they return to their communities, and then spark revenge killings or public lynchings. 

Let’s randomly look at the data from 2018. That year there were 4,497 homicide cases. Of these, 2,474 were considered “under inquiry” and 1,779 were taken to the Director of Public Prosecution to decide whether to press charges or not. The DPP prosecuted 1,312 cases, of which 1,152 remained pending in court, 48 were convicted and sentenced and three acquitted. The data, from the Police Crime Report, do not show spill-over cases from one year to another.

 What they show, however, is that only about one in four murders leads to a suspect being prosecuted in court, and the conviction rate is under five percent. The problem here isn’t that criminals are necessarily being let off on bail, but that we are not doing enough to collect evidence that would put them away once they appear in court. 

Bringing half-baked cases to court so that suspects can be detained for lengthy periods is punishing people then going back to find out if they committed the crime. MPs should see that the solution lies in improving investigative and prosecutorial bodies, not strangling the Constitution. They should not repeat the mistakes of our history.  

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and  poor man’s freedom fighter. 
[email protected]; @Kalinaki