Entrench presidential debates in Uganda

 By Jaffer Senganda

We congratulate Inter Religious Council of Uganda, (IRCU) and The Elders Forum of Uganda  (TEFU) for hosting the first ever Presidential debate and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for the generous support to the process.  As a civil society stakeholder, I must say that IRCU and TEFU have done civil society proud.

It will be recalled that in 1996 a similar attempt still funded by UNDP was made but as it turned out only Muhammad Mayanja Kibirige the presidential debate for JEEMA showed up. This time all presidential candidates except one attended. Then as now, Mr. Museveni failed to make it, citing a tight schedule elsewhere. The absence of the incumbent from the debate was clearly felt and left many interpretations open. As it turned out, the recently concluded debate was instead an opposition presidential debate.

It is for this reason that we want to suggest that the presidential debate becomes a gazetted activity on the election calendar and should be part of the Independent Electoral Commission's roadmap in the future.  The process should then start with entrenching the presidential debate culture in Uganda's democracy by ensuring that not only one or two debates take place as will be the case in this election.

It would be commendable to hold preliminary presidential debates between aspiring candidates during the consultation period, that period between picking of nomination forms and nomination day, still to provide ample exposure on the competencies of persons hoping to be president well in advance. If this is done it is likely that only the more qualified persons will be making it to the ballot paper.

After nominations, presidential debates should be several and spaced in the election period but also in location. Low budget regional presidential debates would be an effective way to provide candidates with the opportunity to sell their ideas to local audiences. They would also ensure that the local communities with their unique challenges that they want addressed, can ask the candidates specific questions on how they propose to address them. Regional debates should have the added advantage to remove the "elite air" off the debates.

In its present form the presidential debate is largely elitist, conducted only in English and cannot be accessed by the largest number of voters who don't have access to television or for that matter a decoder.

The media in any case should be able to play its role in ensuring that all voices are heard well before and during the election period. Otherwise last minute two or three hour appearances at a presidential debate by some candidates at a debate cannot be a fair way to assess the capabilities and performance of a given candidate.

We also have a suggestion on the questions of the presidential debate. We believe that a presidential debate would do well avoid general questions and focus on interrogating the commitments made by the candidates in their own manifestos. This would have a more profound impact as claims by candidates would be put to the acid test. We noticed that there wasn't much emphasis on this in the first debate.

Candidates should also be tasked to pronounce themselves on the great contradictions of the day. Issues like the restoration of presidential term limits, the size of cabinet, UPE and USE, to build or not to build an oil refinery, the role of traditional leaders in governance, representation of the military in parliament, federal or no federo, to send or not to send Ugandan soldiers to fight abroad, etc. There could be more, but in the time available to each debate, a cluster could be thoroughly interrogated and answers recorded for the horses' mouths.

 In the last debate we did not see this focus and apart for general conclusions that can be made on the manner of speech or eloquence or command of the English language, by the candidates, we did not record any solid positions of each of the candidates on any key issues.

In conclusion, the onus is on the next parliament (the 10th parliament) to entrench the presidential debates in the constitution by amending the Presidential Elections Act.  This will compel the Independent Electoral Commission to schedule pre-nomination and post-nomination presidential debates in its roadmap in every electoral cycle. While the organization can still be left to multiple civil society formations, the EC should be at the center of the planning, to avoid the so called clash of campaign priorities that was cited as the reason for one of the candidates not attending the debate.

The writer is the president of the Muslim Centre for Justice and Law, Kampala.