By Mulengera Reporters
Edgar Tabaro, a practicing lawyer and University law lecturer, on Saturday predicted that things aren’t going to end well for Uganda’s CDF Gen MK (who is also President Museveni’s son) if he continues publicly bragging about human rights violations-similar to what happened to Lord Mayor Emeritus Erias Lukwago. The negative publicity the Lukwago incident has created for Uganda won’t only globally bruise Uganda’s image but could also leave MK personally crippled sooner than he thinks.
Speaking on Capital Gang on Saturday, Tabaro said that much as it’s very discomforting to reflect on such, the bitter truth is that there is no way Ugandan top leaders like Gen MK can sustainably ever run away from international things and obligations.
That whereas Gen MK may not be aware, crimes or breaches relating to human rights violations are matters of ‘international jurisdiction,’ which is always not easy to circumvent like would be the case with the domestic courts. That violations similar to the manner in which Erias Lukwago’s rights were deprived inside the Uganda borders, which Gen MK has casually been bragging about, have always attracted international consequences which will be very hard for the President’s son to escape.
He made reference to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu who continues to be constrained because of the ICC indictments, even when he is more powerful and leads a militarily, economically and diplomatically a much stronger country than Uganda. He explained how Netanyahu can’t freely fly over the European Union airspace, which in a way constrains his power as a man leading the strongest military power in the Middle East. Netanyahu was indicted by the ICC following a petition a number of countries, led by Ramaphosa’s South Africa, sponsored protesting gross violations of human rights of the Palestines in Gaza.
Even in the US, the new Mayor of New York Zoran Mamdan at some point threatened to arrest and hand him (Netanyahu) over to the ICC to stand trial should he ever dare step a foot in his area of geographical jurisidiction.
Tabaro explained that as a result of those ICC international jurisdiction-related restrictions, Natanyahu these days goes through lots of difficulties even when he is trying to travel to the US where the current Trump Administration is globally very powerful and very friendly to him. In fact, the Trump Administration took a firm stand against the ICC indictments. It goes without saying there would be greater operational difficulties if MK, a General from a much poorer and less significant country, were to find himself under similar circumstances.
Tabaro also made reference to former Sudan strongman Gen El-Omar Bashir who one time narrowly survived being arrested before media cameras from an International Conference Center in South Africa where he defiantly travelled to attend a fellow heads of State Summit, after ICC indictments. He said he knows a lot of what exactly happened as fellow Presidents quietly struggled to shield their colleague Bashir from being whisked away like a chicken thief to go and stand trial at the ICC that day. Tabaro said this merely was his humble counsel to the Ugandan CDF who he avoided mentioning by name, a thing which caused some feedback givers from the audience, moderator and fellow panelists who branded him a coward.
Tabaro, whose father retired Justice Patrick Tabaro was a Court registrar who personally administered the oath as Museveni took office on the steps of Parliament in 1986, illustrated how Uganda’s CDF’s impending consequences, stemming from bragging about torturing fellow citizens like Erias Lukwago, don’t even have to strictly come from Western countries and Western Europe. He said it’s very predictable that a situation could be stirred up even from within the Sub Saharan region including countries like Kenya or South Africa which, unlike Uganda, have a strong and very vibrant civil society movement.
He envisaged the possibility of Martha Karua’s peers (from among the African lawyers network) stirring up chaos and creating an internationally very embarrassing scenario for Gen MK the day he attempts to travel through Jomo Kenyatta Airport (or even Oliver Tambo Airport in South Africa). A contingent of fearless civil society vigilantes from any civically-empowered African country could vigorously step forward and attempt to conduct a citizen arrest of Uganda’s CDF; just like it was attempted on Zimbabwe’s Mugabe as international scrutiny, sanctions and isolation intensified around him.
Characteristically talking in parables as he always does, the highly exposed Tabaro implied this is one way through which the international jurisdiction-related consequences he had earlier on hinted about could one day play out to the personal detriment of Gen MK. He disclaimed by repeatedly making it clear that his submission was strictly advisory, implying that the President’s son (who lately has claimed to have unlimited powers over everyone living in Uganda) doesn’t have to heed his advice.
On the same radio program, there was Duncan Abigaba who just like Tabaro is an NRM ideologue. Abigaba agreed with fellow panelists that the situation in Uganda today isn’t any different from the anxiety and uncertainty that prevailed during the darkest moments of the Idi Amin and Milton Obote regimes.
Agreeing with NUP’s Benjamin Katana who had castigated Ugandan judiciary top leaders for playing safe, self-preservation games instead of fearlessly emulating CJ Emeritus Wako Wambuzi who repeatedly stood up to Amin and respectfully advised him against military tribunals, Abigaba likened the cowardice of contemporary Ugandan judges to what prevailed among judges who served under the Adolf Hitler-led Nazi Germany. He said today’s judges in Uganda deserve sympathy and not condemnation because they too are vulnerable and victims of what is happening.
Benjamin Katana, who used to be part of NRM until he pivoted in around 2018 following the violence that accompanied the removal of age limits in the constitution, asserted that dictatorial and draconian as many people considered him to have been, Idi Amin was a more tolerable tyrant than Gen MK. He said its true Amin presided over torture and killing of many people but he had the decency to deny and try to cover up, unlike Gen MK who uses his X handle to publicly brag about the same. That Amin was subtle and kept denying because he had the sophistication to know the international consequences which Tabaro had hinted about earlier.
Katana said more things to corroborate his claim that the Ugandan governance situation is back to the dark days of Amin and Obote, if not much worse. He said the manner in which Erias Lukwago was tortured and humiliated resembles what many lawyers endured during Amin’s days. “We are back to that full circle because Sam Njuba who was the Uganda Law Society president had to lead from exile, exactly the way Isaac Semakadde is leading us today.” He also referred to Kasibayo who was Yoweri Museveni’s personal attorney; asserting that what the past regimes did to him is exactly what Erias Lukwago went through earlier in the week.
Abigaba also wondered which god contemporary Ugandan judicial officers pray to these days if they can’t have or exhibit any semblance of humanity to be able to see that a frail suspect like Kizza Besigye or Erias Lukwago deserves to go for medication as opposed to being remanded back to Luzira.
Katana also called upon Museveni, his former idol, to turn in his bed at night while sleeping and reflect on the sacrifice 0.5m Ugandans made under his NRA war, during which they laid down their lives in order for Uganda to become a better-governed country. He said none of those peasants died and risked the wrath of Obote’s UNLA soldiers in order for Gen Museveni to become President for 40 years whereafter his son would re-enact the Idi Amin like scenes in the country’s governance structure.
He asserted that it’s not right for Gen MK to assume self-importance, while arbitrarily deciding the fate of every citizen, as if its only his dad and uncle Gen Salim Saleh who fought in the bush to make this country free. He challenged Gen Museveni and his son MK to name any close relative of theirs who died as a result of that NRA war. Katana also called on Gen MK to respect the country’s constitution because its under its provisions that even the CDF office he occupies was created; otherwise there would be no someone called CDF if the same wasn’t a creature of the same constitution. He is CDF because that position was created under the constitution and other relevant laws of the land, Katana (eloquent as always) emphasized.
Whereas other panelists like Tabaro nostalgically reflected on the Museveni-led NRM of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which investigated and hard very good intelligence on activities of subversive groups like Gen Moses Ali’s and Aggrey Awori’s Force Obote Back (FOBA) and went ahead to engage, forgive and integrate such armed rivals into government, Duncan Abigaba (who made it clear he wasn’t prepared to defend CDF’s actions even though he is NRM) claimed that Uganda was now at that point of the worst form of repression similar to what Kenyans endured under Arap Moi in the late 1980s through the 1990s.
Abigaba called on Ugandans to accept the bitter fact that being in perpetual imprisonment is the price their icons like Kizza Besigye, Erias Lukwago and others are going to have to pay for Uganda to become a better-governed country as was the case with Ken Matiba, James Orengo and Raila Odinga who endured decades of persecution in order to adequately expose and weaken the Moi dictatorship in neighboring Kenya.
Giving the example of a senior police officer who Museveni rang and informed how the state had all the details of his involvement in FOBA before pardoning, promoting and deploying him to head intelligence gathering in State House, Tabaro demanded that the Museveni of that time re-enacts himself and takes charge once again so that the politics of magnanimity, as opposed to priding in human rights violations, once again becomes the way things are done in the NRM-led Uganda. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
