On May 26 President Museveni gave a rare speech about Uganda’s opposition. He acknowledged that opposition parties too can generate debate and policies that spark development. The president was speaking at the opening ceremony of the Africa Regional Conference on the Electoral Cycle and Democratic Reforms at Munyonyo Resort hosted by the interparty organisations dialogue (IPOD). IPOD brings together political parties with representation in parliament which comprise the ruling NRM and the opposition FDC, DP, UPC, CP and JEEMA.

 “It is the ultimate responsibility of all Africans to promote dialogue and fight dictatorship,” the President said. He argued that dialogue must be based on issues that are important to the African people and the opposition must suggest alternative policies. “We should not base political competition on the personal issues of individual actors but on the competition of programmes and ideas,” he said.

However, the opposition parties have a suggestion on reforming the method of constituting the Electoral Commission to ensure a level ground in a multiparty dispensation which the president and his party have rejected. In his book, Sowing the Mustard Seed (page 122 & 123), Museveni writes: “[Paulo] Muwanga’s government refused to amend the electoral law, hoping to use its loopholes to cheat through double voting, switching ballot boxes, false counting, gerrymandering, hooliganism and so on…By the time the elections were held, it was clear that whatever the outcome, there could be no satisfactory result which would benefit the country. All the UPC wanted was the façade of an election in order to legitimise the coup they were to carry out.” The electoral law reforms the president is writing about are the same reforms the opposition parties are demanding today. And Museveni too has rejected the opposition’s call for electoral law reforms and given exactly the same reasons like Muwanga gave in 1980: That the Election Commission is very competent with people of high integrity.” 

The struggle for electoral law reforms in Uganda has been on since 1980. The results of 1980 general elections were contested and a rebellion ensued. About 500,000 Ugandans died during the five-year insurgency that brought Museveni to power. One of the reasons for the NRA rebellion, Museveni says, was the need for electoral reforms to stop voting rigging and ensure free and fair elections. However the Supreme Court has twice ruled that the Electoral Commission failed to conduct free and fair elections in 2001 and 2006. This is the same commission the president insists is “too competent to be changed.”  

Probably the commission is competent. But the contention has mainly been on the way the electoral commission members are appointed.  Of the four elections Uganda has held since 1980, two were conducted under a multiparty system of governance. The participating political parties in the electoral process are suspicious of the independence of the Electoral Commission in organising credible elections without due influence from the ruling party. As such the opposition parties have been calling for a change in the procedure of appointing the electoral commissioners. Their proposed reforms, they think, would provide a level playground for all actors in the electoral process.

Many analysts say that the selection of the EC members must be determined by a neutral committee comprising Ugandans of national integrity composed after frank public discussions and consensus among all political players and the civil society. They suggest that the EC members especially the Chairperson and Secretary should never again be persons handpicked by the ruling party alone. It should be the national consensus committee of eminent persons that should supervise and judge the work of EC with minimal, if any, resort to the courts of law. Uganda’s political opposition groups agree with this proposal.

This arrangement has worked in Malawi. The Malawian EC is headed by a judge nominated by the judicial service commission. The Malawian president, in consultation with leaders of the political parties represented in parliament, appoints qualified members of the commission who are vetted by the parliamentary committee on public appointments. The commissioners have a four-year renewable tenure of office. 

Ghana on the other hand has the most elaborate process of selecting its EC team. The commissioners’ tenure is permanent; the current Ghanaian EC members were appointed in 1993 and have presided over elections and seen presidents leave office and they will continue organising similar elections.

Overseeing the activities of Ghana’s EC is the Interparty Advisory Committee which is an informal, non-legislated body of representatives of all registered political parties. It ensures the active involvement and constructive engagement of parties in designing and implementing the EC programmes.

South Africa’s EC is appointed by the President upon recommendation of a committee of the National Assembly. Recommendations are made from a list of candidates prepared by a panel of representatives from the other institutions supporting democracy, namely the Human Rights Commission, the Constitutional Court, the Commission on Gender Equality and the Public Protector.

Recently the IPOD member party secretary generals visited Malawi to study how its EC has organised agreeable elections. DP’s Mathias Nsubuga, the chairman of IPOD, described the Malawi experience as the best solution Uganda should adopt to end its election related conflicts. Basing on Malawi’s procedure of constituting the EC, Nsubuga believes with dialogue Uganda can get an all-inclusive EC. He said parties would organise a meeting of IPOD’s highest body, the Summit of Presidents of the Political Parties, to discuss the matter.

The reason for calling for independent bodies to appoint the EC is to ensure the commissioners’ loyalty is not to the president, but the country. When it’s not the president who “gives” them employment and he can’t remove them from office at will, they will feel free to serve the public rather than the president. Yet fewer African presidents are willing to relinquish the power to appoint electoral commissioners, people who are increasingly becoming Africa’s kingmakers. 

While meeting the US deputy secretary of state Johnny Carson last month, President Museveni said the current EC team was vetted by parliament and there was no need to reappoint a new one since both the ruling and opposition parties legislators sit on the parliament’s appointment committee that vets.

Reacting to IPOD’s call for an all-inclusive EC, Daudi Migereko, who is the government’s chief whip, said Ugandans are ready and used to holding regular elections and cannot afford to postpone the February 2011 elections to provide for the Judicial Service Commission to appoint a new EC team. The Uganda constitution empowers the president to appoint the EC. Thus allowing the opposition parties’ proposal to have the Judicial Service Commission to appoint the EC would require amendment of the constitution.

Uganda has held five elections since it attained independence in 1962. But controversies over the fairness of these elections have persisted to date. The first post independence elections to be organised were by the Military Commission headed by Paulo Muwanga deputised by Yoweri Museveni who was then the Minister of Defence in December 1980. Vincent Sekkono was the secretary to the Electoral Commission chaired by K.S.M.  Kikira, a former district commissioner. Kikira was allegedly a UPC card-holder and diehard who was strategically appointed to the EC to fulfill UPC’s desires. But the commissioners were appointed with the approval of the Military Commission, making its members part of the electoral process. The election outcome surprisingly was disputed by Museveni who was a member of the Military Commission. This marked the beginning of the 1981 NRA guerrilla war that brought Museveni to power in 1986.

The next three elections to be held in Uganda (in 1994 for Constituent Assembly and for presidency and parliament in 1996 and 2001) were under the one-party Movement system of governance. So no political party would claim to have been left out during elections although the multiparty opposition still existed informally and the parties complained the Movement had an unfair advantage over others in the electoral process. The 1994 CA elections were organised to elect members to draft the 1995 constitution. Museveni appointed his Ntare School old boy, Besweri Akabway, the chairman of the election.

Another election, which was this time general since the one of 1980, was organised in 1996 to elect the president and Members of Parliament. Akabway again presided over the election. Akabway, an economist accountant now working with the Uganda Revenue Authority, was replaced before the 2001 elections.

In 2001 general elections, Haji Aziz Kasujja, a banker, was the chairman of the Electoral Commission. The presidential election result was contested by Museveni’s closest rival Kizza Besigye and the Supreme Court ruled that there had been massive rigging of the elections. But the judges, on 3-2 majority decision, upheld the election results saying the final outcome had not been substantially affected, the massive rigging notwithstanding.

In 2006 a lecturer of mechanical engineering, Dr Badru Kiggundu, was appointed EC chairman by Museveni to organise the elections. Again the presidential election results were contested by Kizza Besigye. Like in the 2001 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld, in a 4-3 majority ruling, that the elections had not been free and fair but that despite the unfairness, the final outcome had not been affected in a substantial manner to warrant a rerun.

“I would not be surprised if a pathologist is appointed to carry out a postmortem on the 2016 elections,” says Dr Frank Nabwiso of the interparty cooperation secretariat.

Observers say the partisan and rather unilateral appointment of the national electoral body is what has denied Uganda’s elections credibility. The longer the EC members are still appointed by the head of the ruling party, the further it will be perceived partisan. 

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