Omar Kalinge Nyango
30 October 2008
opinion
We have argued before that the military's role in Uganda's politics is not just a troubling memory. It is a clear and present danger to democracy.
Any discussion about democratic transition in Uganda would be preposterous without giving enough attention to the military's dubious, yet constitutional role.
The Seventh Parliament voted to maintain the provision for 10 nominated army MPs, entrenching the military further in Uganda's political psyche. Even in a multiparty system, the armed forces' role in politics remains risky, even suspect, and the army's pretensions to neutrality have been put to test on several occasions, not least during all successive presidential elections when the military has been documented to have sided openly with the ruling party, the NRM.
The rationale for soldier representation in parliament is embedded in Uganda's turbulent history. It has been argued that soldiers intervened twice to disrupt civilian rule, in Amin's 1971 coup and again in 1985, because they were not "sufficiently politicised" or politically educated to understand their role in a democracy. They could therefore not grasp the relationship between civilian and military authority, which led to indiscipline and rivalry.
Because the army must, by default, monopolise the power of coercion, the civilian population could only be victims of intimidation, physical abuse and often, decimation. It is the irony of history that should interest keen observers. In order to establish a "new order" in which soldiers would, according to the official story, "return to barracks", the gun was the preferred tool of the National Resistance Movement when it waged a bloody five-year war that left half a million people dead in the central region between 1981 and 1986.
Yet again, an army, this time a guerilla army, had established itself as a key factor in political change in Uganda. It did not go back to the barracks. It came to parliament.
After their triumph, the National Resistance Army (NRA) addressed a major concern, namely, lack of discipline among armed soldiers. Ugandans sighed in relief when they stopped associating the military uniform with terror. In the euphoria that ensued, unsuspecting Ugandans seemed to forget that one "undisciplined" military rule had simply been replaced by another "disciplined" military rule.
To attain the legitimacy it required, the NRM/NRA government enlisted the support of civilian politicians and formed what was to be referred to as a broad-based government, under the single party system of the NRM. The experiment worked. Leading 'democrats' joined the military government and thus legitimised the military intervention. By the time the democrats finally decided to pull out of the military-civilian arrangement when the Democratic Party's Dr Paul Ssemogerere decided to run for president against Museveni in 1996, they had already lost all credibility as democrats.
They had irreversibly lost their democratic power bases. In 2006, DP fielded Ssebaana Kizito, also a former minister under the military-civilian arrangement. He received less than 2.5 per cent of the presidential vote. The leading challenger to Museveni since 2001, has been a soldier politician, Col. Dr Kizza Besigye, perhaps Uganda's most recognisable opposition figure. It may take a while for the ordinary Ugandan to accept any leader without a military background. In the circumstances, this could be Besigye's strongest asset: his military past.
When the NRM took over, it came to establish a so-called civilised military government, different from the old-fashioned military junta that had characterised much of the third world. Since 1986 Uganda has been a country under a "military control and civilian participation" model of public administration. In this model, when the military takes over government, it often keeps a degree of civilian participation for practical or symbolic reasons, or for both. To mask the fact that the military is really pulling the strings behind the scenes, civilian leaders may be put at the head of government.
It is sedative to see civilian figures such as Apollo Nsibambi and Gilbert Bukenya or even earlier, a one Specioza Kazibwe or a Cosmas Adyebo in symbolic positions of authority. Meanwhile, in parliament, opposition members struggle to be heard, while the sitting government has 10 mandatory votes in parliament, ensured by 10 nominated soldiers. As the lessons of the past 22 years show, the major institution on which the current regime rests is the army. The military High Command could be the ultimate decision maker. Other institutions are called on a public relations approach, but politically deceitful.
Uganda's democratic transition will need more rethinking. How can the civilian politician become relevant in Uganda's politics? How does Uganda persuade the military to return to barracks and do what it can only do best: defend the nation's borders?
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The problem here is not the army but the bankrupt and corrupt politicians that have used and abused a legitimate institution to acquire and retain power. Obote was accused of doing it, Idi Amin did it too, and now Museveni is doing it. Each one of these less than illustrious presidents have abused the military institution that is rightly meant to protect the sovereignty of Uganda to intimidate voters and oppress and crush their political opponents, an entirely disfunctional arrangement the military was not supposed to serve. Most socalled generals in the UPDF are really crude politicians who are pretend military because they know it serves their political self-aggrandisement. For one thing they are not professional, they have never attended any formal military training, and it explains why up to date the military, UPDF, has remained unprofessional because it is run or misrun by unprofessional generals whose real intent is it to use it to acquire and retain political power. There are so many soldiers within the UPDF who are equally abused as the civilian population is because they are there to serve the interests of the corrupt ruling elite. If the ordinary people power wont dislodge the current corrupt political order and dispensation, somebody in the equally disaffected lower ranks of the military will, or a combination of both will. There is no way this disfunctional arrangement that serves only the political interests of the corrupt despots is sustainable for ever.