One step forward to democracy

Aug 28, 2010

ON Wednesday the Constitutional Court ruled that the charge of sedition is unconstitutional and struck it off the law books of Uganda.

ON Wednesday the Constitutional Court ruled that the charge of sedition is unconstitutional and struck it off the law books of Uganda.

The ruling came in the petition filed by journalist Andrew Mwenda and the East African Media Institute challenging the law of sedition and sectarianism.

The five judge panel of the Constitutional Court, however, upheld the law of sectarianism.

Sedition is publishing or making utterances with intention to bring hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against the President or Government.

Sectarianism is printing, publishing or uttering statements or acts likely to promote hatred, contempt, hostility or ill-will against somebody or group of people on account of religion, tribe, ethnic or regional origin.

The law of sedition was a colonial law targeted at pro-independence agitators but conveniently carried over by the subsequent post-independence governments.

The court has just confirmed what all concerned parties already knew — the law had long passed its sell-by-date.

To begin with, no one has been successfully convicted of the charge partly because of the difficulty of proving intent and whether the person’s publications or utterances had caused disaffection against the President or the Government.

And secondly, enforcing the law in a multi-party dispensation is a contradiction in terms, since one of the opposition’s main roles is to criticise the President and/or the government of the day.

In a functioning democracy no one is above the law and all should be subject to scrutiny.

That being said, the scrapping of the law does not give the media, politicians or any other person carte blanche to besmirch the person of the President or tell lies about the Government.

All Ugandans, not only the journalists, are the winners from the ruling against the law of sedition. This a significant step forward for democracy in this country.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});