We need national dialogue to heal ailing 1995 Constitution

Uganda has been an independent country since Tuesday, October 9, 1962. However, 56 years after independence, all the political efforts aimed at nation building have not yielded tangible and sustainable value systems to build a national political culture and consensus.

The political history of Uganda reads like a case study in a crisis of confidence; with brutal armed conflict as a sub text. And with such a crisis of confidence, building a national consensus to rally the population has eluded the country.
The view that electoral processes would bring the much needed national consensus has fallen flat. For good measure, Uganda has now held five consecutive national elections since 1996.

If one added the election that brought the first post-independence government in 1962 and the famous 1980 elections, Uganda is likely to be one of the very few African countries that have held more than five multi-party elections.
Yet all of those numbers of elections add up to nothing; because they have always attracted the tag of ‘disputed elections’.
Most Ugandans now seem to have come to the conclusion that elections alone are unlikely to produce the much-needed and elusive national consensus. That’s why Ugandans now have minimal confidence in electoral processes as a source of a national consensus behind which to rally the population and national vision.

With this state of affairs, most Ugandans would espouse the idea of a national dialogue as a basis or platform from which a national consensus would be generated to rally the population.
After the 2011 and 2016 elections, it became apparent to most Ugandans that elections would not be the main instrument to build a national consensus. And the idea of seeking alternative tools was born.

The idea of holding a national dialogue was mooted by The Elders Forum of Uganda (TEFU) immediately after the 2016 elections.
It has gained so much currency that it now represents one of (or the only?) hope for Uganda to generate a national consensus.

For some historical background, it should be noted that Uganda has had three clear opportunities to build national consensus namely: 1) The political and administrative processes that led Uganda to independence; 2) The 1978-9 war effort against military ruler Gen Idi Amin; and 3) The process of making the 1995 Constitution.

However, all these opportunities seem to have only offered the political and military elite an opportunity to pursue their own political interests than to forge a national political value system on which a national consensus would be built.
Whereas the lead-up to the 1962 consensus was about who would own which part of Uganda after the departure of the British colonialists, the 1995 Constitution was more concerned with the holding and exercising of state power.

Clearly both the 1962 (pre-independence) consensus and the 1995 consensus fell short of addressing some historical, current and future challenges. And momentous opportunities of 1962 and 1995 were clouded by immediacy and currency of the time.
The currency in 1962 was the urge or the drive to (quickly) gain independence from the British colonialists and in 1995, it was about the legitimacy of the political and military elite who had grabbed power by force of arms in 1986.

Today, the call for a national dialogue represents another attempt by Ugandans to forge a national consensus. This time Ugandans seek sustainable solutions to their historical, current and future challenges.