By Mulengera Reporters
In his swift response to President Museveni’s Saturday night address, in which he criticized the Judiciary for not being tough enough on Dr. Kizza Besigye while making it clear it was his wish to have bail denied in order to protect witnesses, ULS President Isaac Ssemakadde has called out the Ugandan head of state.
In his two-page public statement, Ssemakadde fearlessly accused the President of violating both international and Ugandan law by demanding that Besigye gets punished, through liberty deprivations, before even his guilt is proved.
Many lawyers have since interpreted the contents of Gen Museveni’s Saturday address as amounting to requiring Besigye to prove his innocence, as opposed to the prosecution being the one required to prove his guilt (as it is supposed to be).
The Uganda Law Society boss said that its unlawful interference in the judicial independence for Gen Museveni to hide behind so-called witness protection desires to unilaterally outlaw the granting of bail, something which judicial officers are supposed to decide upon independently.
Ssemakadde said that commenting on an active case like Besigye’s amounts to breaching sub judice rules and makes Gen Museveni to seem to be directing the trial judge to deliver the state-desired outcome against his political opponent Dr. Kizza Besigye.
Ssemakadde made it clear that the ULS he leads won’t stop calling out such repugnant and unlawful behaviour and called on the Chief Justice and the rest of the Judiciary top leadership to immediately condemn the President for orchestrating such overt executive interference into the work of the Judiciary.
Many Ugandans commenting online equally castigated the President while claiming that his address amounted to framing and proclaiming talking points which Justice Emmanuel Baguma must adhere to, while carrying out and presiding over the Besigye trial.
Ssemakadde says what Gen Museveni, who he accuses of interfering with the judiciary independence just like his son Gen MK the CDF, ought to prioritize if he is indeed committed and genuine about improving judicial outcomes is to fight for the end of political persecution, institutional inertia and corruption which have combined to make the CJ Flavian Zeija-era judiciary the most inefficient and least inclined to defend human rights because each and every judge fears for their lives in case of confrontation with the judiciary. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
