I regret joining politics, says former minister Sarah Kiyingi

Talking to former State Minister of Internal Affairs Sarah Kiyingi, you notice that she regrets ever venturing into politics.

When she returned from the Netherlands in 1995, after living there for more than four years, running for political office was the last thing on her mind. Her plan was to join the academia as an assistant lecturer at Makerere University.

But, she says, people from her home area of Rakai persuaded her to contest for a parliamentary seat.

 Her father, David Livingstone Kiyingi, had been abducted and murdered during the Obote II regime for allegedly supporting the rebellion that Yoweri Museveni, who had contested in 1980 and lost, had started.

Her father was one of the many victims of the infamous panda gari operation.  The people in her home area had always seen her father as a great leader and they believed she had the same qualities and deserved to lead them, especially since the man her father was killed supporting was in power.

On the other side, the process of getting herself recruited as a lecturer at Makerere University moved at a snail’s pace.

Eventually, she decided to heed her community’s call and run for the District Woman MP seat in 1996. For the first couple of years as an MP, she felt happy about the decision she had made.

She says she felt she was working with a government which was fighting for the good of the people, and which would enable her to make a difference and meet the expectations of the people who had elected her.

“We did a good job in my first year of Parliament and I was happy,” Ms Kiyingi says, recalling how the 6th Parliament censured ministers accused of corruption.

 It was Ms Kiyingi who initiated the process to censure Mr Kirunda Kivejinja – then minister of Transport and Communications – on accusations of mismanaging thousands of litres of automobile fuel. This was during Ms Kiyingi’s first term in Parliament.

For her, contributing to the fight against corruption, which was one of the objectives of the government as enshrined in the 10-Point Programme with which the National Resistance Army/Movement (NRA/M) emerged from the bush war, made her feel useful to the community back in her constituency and the country at large.

However, she says, this sense of contentment was short-lived. She says the government soon lost the will to fight corruption and promoting democracy and good governance.

 That is as far as she sees things, of course, and many other critics have accused the government under President Museveni of at best tolerating corruption and at worst abetting it. The government, however, doggedly defends its actions and says it remains committed to the fight against corruption.

When Ms Kiyingi came to a conclusion that the government she was serving under was not committed to the fight against corruption, she says, it made her realise that her entry into politics was a venture that would not bear fruit. She was full of regret.

Ms Kiyingi’s view was that things were evolving from bad to worse, especially during the 2001 presidential campaigns and elections. Even then, however, she kept some faith and waited for President Museveni to peacefully hand over power in 2006 after his second and then last term expired.

However, she says, the biggest shock of her career and life thus far was to come when – in 2003 – it became clear to her that Mr Museveni was orchestrating a process to remove term limits from the Constitution and run for the presidency again in 2006.

He had made her and other people in the government promise Ugandans during the campaigns for the 2001 elections that what he sought in 2001 would be his last elected term after which he would oversee a transition to a new leader and retire to his farm.

Ms Kiyingi says she expressed unease at the plan. Her profile was not the biggest. She was the State minister of Internal Affairs. She had not fought during the Bush War and did not have a big profile.

Ministers and other officials with much bigger profiles as far as the government was concerned were keeping quiet about the proposed removal of term limits, and others were actively working to secure the same.

There were senior members of the ruling group who were opposed to the lifting of term limits, of course, led by the late Eria Kategaya.

Kategaya was the first deputy prime minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, and was widely regarded as Mr Museveni’s friend from childhood.

Kategaya had also participated in the Bush War. His being vocally opposed to the lifting of the term limits gave Ms Kiyingi some more strength. There were others who opposed the idea, including Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, then minister of Local Government, Ms Miria Matembe, then minister of Ethics and Integrity.   

President Museveni was to have his way, however, and he moved to deal with members of Cabinet who opposed his will.

Ms Kiyingi was subsequently fired from her ministerial position, together with Ms Matembe, Bidandi and Kategaya.

Ms Kiyingi says she saw her sacking as a blessing in disguise, as she was no longer on the same side with President Museveni.

She knew it was not going to be easy to oppose him. Being a religious person, she asked a confidant - a religious leader – to pray for her. When she was fired, she believed it was God answering her prayers.

“I knew this was the beginning of trouble and I was happy to be out. I knew that changing the Constitution to benefit one individual was very dangerous,” Ms Kiyingi says in her relatively quiet voice.

Then the time came for the MPs to make the decision. The process of taking the vote had been a subject of great controversy itself.

Then Brig Henry Tumukunde (now Lieutenant General and presidential candidate) was an Army MP and spoke loudly against changing the rules of voting in Parliament so that the decision on whether to lift the term limits would be carried out through open voting.

Gen Tumukunde argued that members needed to be given the security of a secret ballot to vote freely on that important matter.

For opposing the method that the system had chosen – open voting – Tumukunde was forced to resign as an Army MP and had charges brought against him, with the army accusing him of ‘spreading harmful propaganda’.

Ms Kiyingi says she learnt that many of her colleagues, who were opposed to the amendment, refused to vote against it in order to keep their seats. For Ms Kiyingi, however, doing that would amount to betraying her conscience and the people who placed their trust in her.

She says: “The MPs would ask me, ‘don’t you want to come back?’. I would say, “But we are not voting about my coming back to Parliament.” We were voting on a matter of principle and I was not going to put my coming back to Parliament ahead of Ugandans’ interests.”

By this time, Ms Kiyingi had realised that she couldn’t stay in politics any longer. She left to venture into farming and to devote more time to praying and teaching the Bible. She vows never to return to elective politics.

“I don’t want to return to elective politics where I am going to spend all my time trying to convince people to not prioritise money ahead of the future of this country,” she says. “And it is not only the money you are up against but also the threats and the entire state machinery.”

But retirement and prayers have not provided her the solace she was looking for. She is sad that things have hit rock bottom – in her opinion – with the rampant corruption and declining rule of law.

When she realised that her silence was not helping, she was compelled to initiate an online petition to try and force MPs to return the Shs20m they had allocated themselves during the passing of the supplementary budget to fight Covid-19. She couldn’t stay quiet in her retirement any longer. 

Although she is frustrated that Mr Museveni’s government has got worse in her opinion, she is not surprised. She says her observations during the time she was in government made her realise that Museveni loathes democracy and the rule of law.

She says that after the promulgation of the 1995 Constitution, it became clear that Museveni was not willing to subject himself to the law. She recalls him always asking the Attorney General how the law could be avoided every time he wanted something that the law wouldn’t allow. 

“He never asked what the law said and how we could comply with it. For him a law that does not support what he wants is a bad law.”

It must be because of these observations that Ms Kiyingi told the MPs who, during the term limits debate, thought that Museveni would be stopped by the age limit, that Museveni would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.

Kiyingi says view was enhanced by what transpired when the plan to remove the term limit was being hatched. She narrates how Museveni sat in one place for the whole day, keen on everything and observing everyone’s reaction and body language. She says it made her realise he would stop at nothing to achieve what he wanted.

“I had never seen him so interested in something. He sat at that meeting from morning to evening. I watched him smile from ear to ear as the people that had come from many villages rose up and said they and their people don’t want the President to go and that they wanted the term limits removed. He sat there all day because he couldn’t let that process go on without his influence.”

She blames Museveni for the political trend which has filled political positions with incompetent and corrupt leaders. Kiyingi says Museveni resorted to the use of money when he began to increasingly lose the support of many sections of Ugandans.

Kiyingi recalls that, in the run up to the 2001 general elections, Museveni’s handlers led by Henry Tumukunde gathered Besigye supporters in Kalisizo and gave them money to vote for Museveni.

She says that when Museveni’s supporters saw this they also demanded for money. Two years later, when Museveni sought to remove the term limit clause from the Constitution, he gave MPs Shs5 million each to support the amendment and money slowly made its way to the top of the requirements to win a political seat.

Kiyingi says the trend has left people like her who want to work for the country out and instead favours those seeking to enrich themselves which, she is afraid, spells doom for the country.

She recalls one MP who told her that their reasons for supporting the term limit removal was because of their businesses which do not pay any taxes.  She says because people like those have helped Museveni entrench himself further, it will not be easy to change the situation.

“No one is talking about governance and the mismanagement of this country,” Kiyingi says.

She accuses Museveni of selfishness and greed for power that she says has bred leaders who are only interested in money.

Her biggest regret is not being able to convince enough MPs to reject the removal of term limits. “When we had an opportunity to save the country, we didn’t.”

Her only hope, she says, is if leaders can mobilise and sensitise the people to reject Museveni’s rule. She believes that the approach of the Alliance for National Transformation party led by former army commander, Mugisha Muntu, provides hope that eventually a critical mass of people could be mobilised to oust Museveni.

“We need to have a leadership of integrity, a leadership that respects the rule of law, a leadership that has a sense of shame, we need an accountable leadership.”

Who is Kiyingi

She hails from Rakia District and is the daughter of David Livingstone Kiyingi, who was abducted and murdered during the Obote II regime for allegedly supporting the rebellion that Yoweri Museveni started.

In the 1996 General Election, she contested for the Rakai District Woman MP seat and won and later became the State minister of Internal Affairs.

She is very passionate in the fight against corruption having initiated the process to censure Kirunda Kivejinja – then minister of Transport and Communications – on accusations of mismanaging thousands of litres of automobile fuel.

She also initiated an online petition to try and force MPs to return the Shs20m they had allocated themselves during the passing of the supplementary budget to fight Covid-19.

Not happy

Buying votes

Ms Kiyingi blames Museveni for the political trend which has filled political positions with incompetent and corrupt leaders. She says Museveni resorted to the use of money when he began to increasingly lose the support of many sections of Ugandans.