By Mulengera Reporters
In a brief televised address to the nation on Saturday, President Museveni inadvertently confirmed that by refusing to release Dr. Kizza Besigye on bail, the judicial officers are actually doing what he exactly would like to have them do.
There have been sustained criticisms on the judiciary leadership, and more so Justice Baguma Emmanuel, as human rights organizations protest the perceived political persecution of Besigye and other political prisoners. But Gen Museveni, instead of preferring that the judiciary explain themselves, in details, explained why there was justification for Besigye and others to continue being denied bail.
By coming off as the spokesperson for the judiciary on this matter, Gen Museveni corroborated claims by the Isaac Ssemakadde-led Uganda Law Society and global human rights organizations that where things have reached, no judge can ever risk granting Besigye bail for fear of getting into problems from powers that be.
Instead, Museveni, who days earlier had received a petition from the country’s top religious leaders operating under the Inter Religious Council of Uganda protesting the perceived Besigye persecution, rebuked the judges for treating his former personal doctor more leniently than necessary.
Museveni, who spoke for a short time in order to enable Ugandans go watch world cup, wondered why for the last more than 20 months, the judges have been massaging Besigye to the extent that he has deliberately been frustrating and preventing the main trial from taking off by playing around. The truth is Besigye’s lawyers have kept filing applications to ensure procedural justice and fair trial for their client and this is what Gen Museveni, who isn’t a lawyer, calls playing around, wasting time and deliberating frustrating the trial.
He demanded to know why judges have continued allowing Dr. Besigye to turn court room into theatre. He seemed to be someone who has closely been following the proceedings at Baguma’s court. Museveni demanded to know why the ULS doesn’t condemn Besigye for such conduct. He called it impunity by Besigye. He never spoke about the locking up of lawyers like Erias Lukwago under very dehumanizing circumstances by his security forces or even the deportation of Besigye’s lead lawyer Martha Karua, a globally respected jurist from Kenya, a country she has vowed to become President for via the upcoming Kenyan elections.
Museveni also demanded to know why the religious leaders and Ssemakadde’s ULS never say anything when opposition militants threaten to burn down Kampala, threaten to block his swearing-in and sometimes stage demonstrations during which women are targeted and harassed merely because they happen to be his supporters. He also wondered why these same groups never stand up to defend his rights against his opponent and ordinary Ugandans who contemptuously refer to him as ‘kano akasajja.’
Museveni was very defensive of his son Gen MK, saying political opposition leaders are the ones who deserve to be castigated for engaging in provocative conduct which causes the security forces the CDF leads to fight back sometimes. Museveni said that the security forces should be commended for their restraint because sometimes the provocation can be too much from opposition Ugandans. He rejected claims of Ebintu Bizeemu/the bad Amin days are back saying unlike those days, the Besigyes today are taken to court as opposed to being killed.
On his big screens, Museveni played images of Ugandans who were killed in the past regimes and he had thousands of their skulls to drive his point home. He said today we don’t have skulls or even dead political opponents but people who are in prison from where they keep coming to court. He reiterated his opposition to the generous granting of bail by judges.
Peripherally talking about the NMG closure, Museveni noted that his son Gen MK was right to assert that the Ugandan media wasn’t patriotic like the one of Dubai which never reports bad negative things about the country because the same would scare tourists and harm the economy.
Museveni also said he got afraid that Miria Matembe (who he called my sister) was going to die when he saw her on TV walking with extreme pain as she was supported into the Magistrates court to get formally charged. He said he was surprised that Matembe, who seemed to be in great pain and walked with difficulties as she was being brought to the Court, was able to energetically walk home upon being granted bail. He made it clear he didn’t see anything wrong with the utterances and actions of his son Gen MK whose way of doing things he preferred to portray as collective actions of the country’s security forces.
Museveni demanded that those who are sympathetic to Dr. Besigye should demand for speedy trial so that the state is able to table its evidence for all to see if indeed his former personal doctor is innocent or not. Museveni said that an innocent person would be in a hurry to have a quick trial so that they get the chance to corroborate their innocence. He made it clear that Dr. KB’s acts seen in working towards delaying trial, are simply not acts of an innocent man.
Implying his son to be a savior of Uganda, Gen Museveni likened the CDF to the patriotic acts of Minister Fred Byamukama who he credited for being the whistle blower whose information enabled him identify and catch his own staff who had turned State House into a center of mafia operations. The President asserted that many such perpetrators had to be arrested and put on trial after information was assembled showing they were involved in charging as much as Shs30m from whoever showed up and desired to have a meeting with him in his capacity as the head of state.
The defensiveness with which Gen Museveni spoke about his son means that Ugandans will have no option but to adjust to the new normal whereby they will have to put up with an army commander who is unpredictable, accepts no criticism and generally takes no prisoners in his approach to the conduct of public affairs. Many had hoped that the big man from Rwakitura, who Onyango Obbo and Robert Kabushenga of the Bad Natives podcast say will soon be shocked when Uganda’s proverbial Black Swan moment finally erupts, would use the Saturday address to publicly call out his son and register his remorse as head of government over some of the security forces’ excesses. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
