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UGANDA PEOPLES CONGRESS
(Office of the President)
PRC MEETING - 24 MAY, 2002.
MESSAGE FROM |
A. MILTON OBOTE
PRESIDENT
UGANDA PEOPLES CONGRESS
1. Fellow citizens, Members of the PRC and Members
of the Congress of the people; I send you very warm greetings.
2. I am most pleased that the PRC should be meeting at a time
when every political gauge in Uganda now shows that the NRM
dictatorship is on its way out.
3. The war against dictatorship which the people of Uganda
have been waging with the multipartyists in the vanguard is
not yet won but except for the politically blind, light can be
seen at the end of the tunnel.
4. I send through you greetings to the multipartyists in their
various Parties. I warn that because the dictatorship is aware
of losing, it will go all out to sow seeds of distrust in the
multipartist camp.
5. In March this year, Uganda's political Parties and
organizations did, for the first time a golden service for the
people of Uganda. They composed a Petition to the Commonwealth
Heads of Government and submitted it to their Meeting held in
Australia.
6. The Petition was about dictatorship in Uganda and the
violent suppressions of the human rights and freedoms of the
people of Uganda for 16 years.
7. The Australian Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
(CHOGM) was dominated by events in Zimbabwe and the Uganda
Petition was therefore not discussed. The Uganda dictatorship
is now most concerned that the Commonwealth will take up the
matters in the Petition.
8. Since 1998, the Uganda dictatorship has been wanting to
entrench itself by enacting a Political Organisations Bill
(POB). It took the dictatorship four years to re-enact Article
269 of the Constitution which was first enacted in 1995. The
dictatorship has run out even of ideas of how to entrench
itself.
9. I have requested the PPC Chairman to send me a copy of the
enacted POB. There are matters which should be uppermost in
your minds as you consider the UPC's response to POB. In my
view, the UPC, other Parties and the multipartyists should
respond to POB from a position of responsibility and strength.
10. in the decision of the dictatorship
to enact POB is arrogant defiance of the opinion of Uganda's
multipartyists, of the provision of the UN Universal
Declaration of Human Ri
ghts, of the opinion of supporters
of the Movement and of the
friends of dictatorship in the older democracies who do not
support the provisions of Article 269 of the Constitution.
11. My reading of the positions of the friends of the
dictatorship in the older democracies leads me to warn the
UPC, other Parties and multipartyists to adopt a response
position rooted on of his/her inalienable human rights and freedoms.
12. There are three matters to consider in adopting that
position. First, some of those in the older democracies have
been urging the dictatorship to enact POB. Second, some of
them have never in 16 years accepted that Uganda is or has
been under a dictatorship.
Third, some of them would rather give subventions to entrench
the dictatorship than suspend the subventions.
13. After considering the positions of the friends of the
dictatorship in the older democracies, you have to consider
the fact that the Uganda judiciary is part and parcel of the
dictatorship which some of the friends of the dictatorship
abroad do not accept.
In the Judgement delivered in January, 1994 on the first UPC
Petition of 1993, the Constitutional Court declared a position
on the enjoyment and exercise by the citizen of his/her human
rights and freedoms which showed that the Court is a
validation institution of the inhumanities of the Uganda
dictatorship.
14. In January, 1994, the Constitutional Court said that the
suppressions of the human rights and freedoms of the citizen
and of his/her political Party in the Constituent Assembly
Statute, were TEMPORARY. Now in the year 2002, the
dictatorship has entrenched what was Temporary in 1994 in a
way which takes away all dignity from the
position and office of every Judge.
15. A response based on responsibility and strength means that
it must not be emotional. I suggest that you submit a very
strong case against POB 2002 to the Constitutional Court. The
objective must be to bring it out most clearly that even the
Uganda dictatorship has
accepted in Article 20 of the Constitution that the human
rights and freedoms of the people of Uganda are inherent
(given by God) and not granted by the State as POB 2002
purports to do.
16. When Museveni signs POB into law, the UPC should be
prepared to co-operate with other multipartyists to go to
Court together. Meanwhile, the PPC should begin in earnest to
work on the UPC case. I send you my own contribution. My
contribution is based on my belief that in enacting POB 2002,
the dictatorship has taken the erroneous
position: -
(i) That Article 270 of the Constitution has been amended by
POB 2002.
(ii) That Article 73 of the Constitution allows a POB to
provide for the restrictions of political Parties when only
the Movement System is in office when, in fact, the terms in
the Article are meant to be neutral and to apply whenever any
of the systems in Article 69 is in office.
(iii) That since Article 270 is no longer in operation: -
(a) No Party therefore exists and since no Party exists, all
the prohibitions in Article 269 now re-enacted in POB 2002
means no Party can claim to enjoy or exercise them unless the
Party is registered as stipulated in POB 2002.
17. With the above positions of the dictatorship, my plaint
would go to the jugular veins of POB 2002 with the objective
to jugulate (kill) the Movement System and render POB 2002 and
its Section 21 unconstitutional, defective, impotent and
fraudulent. I do not have POB 2002 but my plaint would be as
follows: -
(i) That Article 270 of the Constitution has not been amended
by POB 2002 because: -
(a) there is no provision in the Constitution on how to amend
the Article and
(b) No Bill has been published with the express provision as
stated in Article 258(2)(a) to amend Article 270.
(ii) That the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), the Party which
together with Kabaka Yekka formed the first Government of
Uganda in 1962 and again formed the Government of Uganda in
December, 1980, is one of the political Parties stated in
Article 270 of the Constitution as being in existence
immediately before coming into force of the 1995 Constitution
and that on account of Clause 2 of Article 72 of the
Constitution, Parliament was to make laws relating to the
registration of political Parties and Organisations under
which the UPC would then operate as a political Party and
further that POB 2002 is not the law provided in Article 270.
(iii) That it is the contention of the UPC that laws for
registration of Parties in Article 270 or for regulating the
activities of Parties in Article 269 which were to be made by
parliament had to be enacted because both Articles are in the
Transitional Chapter of the
Constitution within the Transitional Provisions of Article
263(1) and (2) of the Constitution so that they appear in the
Statute book before the elapse of nine months after the
promulgation of the Constitution in October, 1995 and not
seven years later in the year 2002.
(iv) That since under Article 21 of the Constitution, citizens
who subscribe to each of the systems in Article 69 are equal
before and under the law in all spheres of political,
economic, social and cultural life and in every other respect
and shall enjoy equal
protection of the law, it is the contention of the UPC that by
placing the enactments of laws for the registration and the
regulations of the activities of the Parties of the citizens
who subscribe to the System in 69(2)(b) in the Transitional
Chapter of the Constitution and providing in Articles 263 and
264 the ends of the Transitional Provisions, the Constitution
does not authorise any POB to be enacted seven years after the
promulgation of the Constitution.
(v) That any POB enacted under the authority of Article 269 of
the Constitution has to deal with three separate matters: -
(a) Because the subscribers to the systems in Article 69 are
under Article 21 equal before and under the law and enjoy the
equal protection of the law, the POB must be enacted within
the time provided in Article 263 which period elapsed in 1996
and POB 2002 is
therefore defective, impotent and fraudulent.
(b) It must only regulate the activities of the political
organisations such as when the UPC is holding a public meeting
at the Constitutional Square, no other Party should seek to do
the same at the same place and time and do so by providing
that the political Parties shall continue to exist whenever
any of the systems in Article 69 is in office. POB 2002 is
therefore unconstitutional, defective, impotent and fraudulent
in purporting to provide for the registration of the political
Parties in accordance with Article 73 of the Constitution
under each of the systems in 69. POB 2002 is unconstitutional
because it purports to provide that under Article 73 political
Parties are to be restricted when the Movement System is in
office. POB is supposed to define or regulate the activities
of the political organisations under each of the systems in Article
69. Furthermore, POB 2002 because it was not in place to make
the citizen make an informed choice in the 2000 Referendum in
respect to the activities of the political organisations under
each of the systems in Article 69, now show that the 2000 June
referendum because of the
absence of an effective POB was null and void.
(c) The Preamble to Article 269, read together with Articles
69 and 71 authorise parliament to only make laws regulating
and not for the registrations of political Parties or
suppressing the activities of the political organisations so
that any such laws would under Article 73(1) be neutral to
each of the systems in 69 and therefore that
"during the period when any of the political systems provided
for in this constitution [Article 69] has been adopted,
organizations subscribing to other political systems may exist
subject to such regulations as Parliament shall by law
prescribe." By repeating and
adopting the prohibitions which apply only to organisations in
Article 71 provided in Article 269 and listed as (a) to (e),
POB 2002 has ceased to be neutral within the meaning of
Article 73 and is therefore unconstitutional, defective,
impotent and fraudulent.
18. My draft plaint against POB 2002 is a layman's political
move. POB 2002 is itself the political move and challenge by
the dictatorship. It is for the PPC to polish my draft, expand
it and file in Court.
19. When trial begins, the citizen shall stand erect in
his/her Court with much dignity in the trial of the
dictatorship and the Judges.
20. Our case is that the human rights and freedoms
of the
citizen are God given and are not granted by the
State through
a POB which also restricts them to Kampala.
Our case is that
where the citizen resides, his/her human
rights and freedoms
also reside, that is to
say, like the UPC, EVERYWHERE, in Uganda.
21. I send you this MESSAGE in the Spirit of our National
Motto: FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY.
A. Milton Obote
President
Uganda Peoples Congress |
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