Mulenga deserves the hug

By John Nagenda When the first bombshell struck that two out of the five lordships of the Supreme Court had voted against Museveni in the election case there were two immediate reactions. The first was, Who were the intrepid duo? (That's the polite version.) The second, What on earth had they based their judgement on? Town was abuzz, the common view being that the two were Their Lordships Oder and Tsekooko. Imagine your columnist's shock and horror when the latter name, on allegedly inside information, was replaced by that of Justice Mulenga. People walked around as if they had been shot. Interestingly enough in all the discussions the name of My Lord Oder was a constant. In all this there is not the slightest suggestion that there was impropriety involving those who voted for the Doctor Colonel, nor, for that matter, for those who voted for the President. But it is legitimate to look at the legal and intellectual grounds upon which those who found for Besigye based their opinion. As for Mulenga, views your columnist heard ranged from the not-very-serious having him boiled in oil, to the more civilised one that polite society should 'cut' him at every available opportunity, be it at the drinking of beer, at weddings or funerals. Ululations rent the air when the reading out of the Supreme Court judgements showed that his name was among the three for Museveni rather than the two for Besigye. Your Lordship Mulenga, lover of multipartyism, logic and the law in equal measure, I shall seek your permission to fall in your chest, as the Baganda say, the next time we meet! What was at issue in the case brought to the five justices of the Supreme Court? Surely it can be boiled down to: was enough malpractice perpetrated against the Besigye cause to overturn the result of the presidential election? Bear in mind that Museveni had got around 70% of the vote to Besigye's 27%. To find the necessary proof was an impossible logical and logistical task, made even more so by the fact that each of the 17,000 polling stations was an entity unto itself. Even if you proved the malpractice at one polling station, you had to prove it at another, however similar the two might appear. How do Their Lordships Oder and Tsekooko tackle this difficulty? With some difficulty, as far as your columnist can see, trembling as he does so, for it is not every day that he joins battle with such elevated legal brains! Both see the deployment of the armed forces during the elections as totally sinister; so much so that they overwhelmingly changed the result. How lucky they are that they sit in their safe judicial chairs and play no practical part in the dirty fields where our security forces protect us from daily harm! The youngest Ugandan person knows that dangerous elements were about, intent on disrupting these elections. Both the justices prefer to believe that they were from the one side only. Is it feasible that the Besigye camp committed no transgressions at all? Their judgements will continue to absorb law students for many generations to come. Tsekooko goes as far as to state, "…why no emergency measures were taken to train, say Local Government askaris…" Bless my soul! Is this living in the real world? He goes on, "I cannot therefore accept the argument that the UPDF and PPU were deployed because of deficiencies in the strength of the police force. That is an argument without any merit." Throughout his nearly 200 page judgement, the language used is nothing if not forceful. Even when he is surprisingly inferring that you can use the particular to prove the whole. At another point he comes out and attacks as bribes improvements that Museveni put in place in various sections of Uganda. Not sated by that he then descends to a motor cycle which Museveni gave to a boda boda rider, and calls that a bribe. On most points Tsekooko and Oder are in total agreement. Sometimes they are joined by the other justices, the difference being that the others agree that it was not enough to upturn the election result. When we get to Museveni's pronouncement that Besigye has Aids, both justices get hugely hot under the collar or perhaps wig. Oder goes as far as to categorically state in his judgement that he is certain that Besigye has no Aids. On what evidence? Will this statement come to haunt his lordship? If, God forbid, Besigye has Aids, what then? Will My Lord Oder reconvene the hearings? But in any case did Museveni's statement do enough damage to overturn the election result? And if it was, and supposing it is true, is the judge saying, by extension, that it was that serious a statement, and that therefore, if true, it should certainly have been offered to the voters? Everyone of us, including the judge, knows of unfortunate and unlucky people living with Aids. What President Museveni, quite openly and without malice, postulated was that the job and duties of the presidency were such that nobody weakened by this modern plague could effectively carry them out. Is there no merit in such a view? Not to Justice Oder. He says, "On the credible evidence available I am satisfied that [Museveni] committed the malpractice proscribed by Section 65 of the [presidential election] Act….He committed an illegal practice…" There is no room to go on, and neither would I want to. Get your hands on the judgements and enjoy! Meantime I bow the head in shame, as promised, to Hon Alintuma Nsambu John Chrisestom MP for having mentioned him amongst the multipartyists. It is an apology I enjoy giving.