Daniel Kalinaki
25 June 2009
opinion
President Museveni recently poured water on the smouldering embers of electoral reform by announcing, in a letter to People's Progressive Party Chairman Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, that there would be no changes to the way our elections are conducted.
The only reform, Mr Museveni said, would be the computerisation of the voters' register "to stop the opposition from engaging in multiple registration of voters in Kampala, the north and other areas", ostensibly those in which the opposition has performed well. "Which other reforms are you talking about?" Mr Museveni asked Bidandi.
The Supreme Court, in its ruling on Dr Besigye's petition following the 2006 presidential election, found that the poll did not comply with many aspects of the law, failed to uphold the 'free and fair' principle, had exposed incompetence in the Electoral Commission, and that security agents had intimidated opposition supporters. It highlighted several areas that must be reformed to improve the fairness of our elections.
The Inter-Party Cooperation, which brings together FDC, UPC, Jeema and the Conservative Party, last month presented to Parliament a dossier of proposed electoral reforms including the restoration of presidential term limits, changes to the way the electoral commissioners are appointed, the banning of the army and other security agencies from partisan politics, including elections, and a generally more transparent process.
While it is unfathomable that President Museveni is not aware of these reforms, it is naive to expect him and the ruling National Resistance Movement to fix a broken system which delivers them the presidency and a majority in Parliament. It is just not in their self-interest. Being able to appoint the organisers of the election, its supervisors and the arbiters of any dispute, on top of having the sizeable benefits of incumbency is not a position from which you withdraw easily.
Compare this, however, with the speed and resoluteness with which NRM MPs this week dealt with a proposal to ban party members from standing as independents. They all realised that doing so would keep those rigged out in the party primaries or who lose to more popular candidates, from standing for re-election. So they acted in their self-interest and rejected the proposal.
Electoral malpractices are not the preserve of the government; there is evidence of opposition members rigging albeit on a much smaller scale. This, however, does not justify putting party and self-interest above national interests. A free and fair election that represents the will of the people is the cornerstone of democracy. It is not the alpha and omega, mind, but it allows the masses to choose who leads them and throw them out when they opt to rule them.
This brings us to Iran. Supporters of the opposition candidate, Mirhossein Mousavi, took to the streets of the capital, Tehran, to protest against what they viewed as the flawed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by a landslide. About a dozen people have been killed in the fighting which has sparked off a diplomatic row with the Iranian administration accusing Britain and the United States of sponsoring the protests.
Iran is an autocratic regime where real power is held by the Supreme Leader and his fellow clerics but even then, its people want their votes to count and are willing to fight, prepared to die, for that right. The Iranian clerics have ruled out an annulment of the election and the protests will die away with time but a line has been drawn in the sand; that the people will strike back if they feel their votes are stolen and it will be harder to do so in the next election.
Uganda does not have to go that way or the way of Kenya after its last election; President Museveni and the NRM can still allow some of the bi-partisan reforms that will make our country and its governance institutions stronger - but we must all be prepared to stand up and fight for our right to vote and for our votes to count. If we are unwilling to defend our votes, why should we bother to vote in the first place?
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