NRM open injustices: The main cause of inevitable national political losses

Op-Ed: The people of BUGANDA (and Peri, urban Uganda) are tired of Gen. Y.K. Museveni and the movement at large. Tired because whatever they need can now never be guaranteed or offered by Gen. Museveni and his NRM Party as it stands today.

But remember, the people of the North were tired first but became untired a few years ago. What is happening in BUGANDA that happened in Acholi that stopped…or what was happening…in the same line of query??

When you ask a typical NRM vote hunter what the issue is, they only say, ‘Buganda is not happy”, period, but one can’t pin down a real point that is absent in Bunyoro, where NRM scores above 90% year in and out.

Today I will tell you that it’s nothing to do with politics but only justice, a barrage of unjust cases that, with everyone, begin affecting everyone. When a man is jailed unfairly, most likely he has 100 other relatives who won’t be happy. If they are 1,000, that is already 10,000. But since NRM has been in office for over 3 decades, it is possible that the number of affected could have now reached 3.5 million and is growing.

As we transfer Luzira, before you protest or celebrate the unilateral decision, remember that Luzira Prison literally belongs to you, the reader. It’s one of your homes as a Ugandan. If you know that you are poor, have no “powerful” relatives in government, or have never worked for Gen. Museveni and his ‘system agwan’, you must enter Luzira and stay there someday, whoever you think you are.

Justice is a subjective, ultra-biased, and ambiguous concept as it depends on the observer. There is therefore no such infallible absolute matter as justice. Only imaginations.

In Uganda and Africa at large, justice is tantamount to comedy. In America, it’s worse, as Trump came in and forgave those George Bush jailed, then Biden pardoned those Trump jailed. In Honduras, the former president has just been convicted of drug trafficking by the USA.

He was arrested by the USA in Honduras after he left office. One of his biggest cases was using a presidential pardon to pardon his brother, who is a confessed top drug dealer. Both are now in American jails. The question is, if their presidential pardons were sanctioned by national law, then why can’t they stand universally? The reason is that during the pardon, the due process of pardoning is not clear or even followed and agreeable by the masses, who shall always be in charge of that country.

In recent and many years, we have often heard ‘Presidential Pardons,” but usually for those no one would expect to be released. The one you expect doesn’t have any help (the majority are either untried, innocent, on remand for years without trial as judges enjoy holidays in the Diaspora, etc.).

The role of the president of any nation is to be the champion of national justice for the majority, not that of the minority elites. The truth is, one of the biggest causes of hatred for the NRM government and her leader after corruption and land grabbing is injustice. It is not corruption. What Baganda calls corruption can all be bundled under injustice and impunity.

Under the Department of Injustice and Impunity, we have branches such as selective justice, impunity, selective and premature, unnecessary prosecution of real convicted powerful criminals while ignoring the innocent, case backlogs, remand without trial, bribery and money laundering in the judiciary, etc. The Executive is often aware that the Judiciary is corrupt, but since the former may need the latter to enable her barrage of injustices wherever need may arise, the former often looks away.

A few years ago, Chris Rwakasisi was ‘pardoned,” but an explanation was not given for the motivation of his pardoning. This was followed by Nasur, the former Lord of Kampala, who was accused by Baganda of making people eat slippers.

Even though it was not wrong and legally binding, in reality, His Excellency simply pardoned the criminals as individuals motivated by individual personal thoughts, not Uganda’s mass thinking, as if a referendum had been called to ask if they would be released, they would still be in jail.

It must be made clear that a president unilaterally forgiving someone does not imply that the masses have, even though his actions are legal.

Committing a crime and negotiating with a sitting president or authority cannot, therefore, guarantee your everlasting freedom.

Criminals like Rwakasisi really killed several people’s relatives, and though Gen. Museveni may not have been among them, he must be aware that they are still affected and angry and have never been compensated. For all the crimes Tito Okello Lutwa committed in LANGO, he was never even questioned when “he returned.”  All in the name of national reconciliation. But reconciliation without justice for the affected is just suspended and adjourned, causing inevitable turmoil.

A presidential pardon therefore implies nothing in the long term as long as the pardon is not based on national but private personal human emotions and interests.

In fact, a pardon of such criminals may need another law by the people, such as the agreeable Amnesty Law that Uganda uses for all past and future rebels.

Crime and its impacts are everlasting, even when you survive unjust pardons. That is why the USA can sanction a criminal in Uganda who the President of Uganda treats as a hero.

It means one of them is wrong, either the American or the POU. So who could it be? Who should believe? See the bias in justice.  Is a criminal defined by a national president, ruler, or international community, or simply by the crime they committed against the people?? Even today, Ugandans are not sure of the right answer.

The RAMPANT cases of unilateral UNEXPLAINED unilateral amnesties (Presidential pardons) and even ‘loss of interest” in the case by the DPP or GOVT’ as regards powerful, rich, elites, connected people, convicted and suspected corrupt former government officials, etc. are therefore one of the biggest causes of injustice in Uganda.

Cumulatively, these have metamorphosed into political losses for NRM leaders and recently a loss of 30% of the national vote by the Chairman of NRM to opposers, a number forecast to rise to 55% by 2026 if nothing is done to stem the root causes.

The people also see the kind or category of humans the president forgives. It’s not the one the majority would surely miss. Those they miss and would miss are incarcerated daily by the defunct and super-rotten justice system.

Humans who massacred children, untried former powerful corrupt police bosses, corrupt NSSF and Min of Finance looters who are one of the only few ever convicted in this Regime, like Chandi Jamwa, Nikson Agasirwe, and a few hundreds of LOADED elites. Lakini Go to Luzira and count the ‘Number of Chicken Thieves’ over a period of decades. Doesn’t His Excellency see them?? He sees only the rich Ugandans who landed in trouble later., not the majority who vote for him in millions and land in the same kind of trouble with the same law.? What is the motive for releasing one Jamwa and leaving 29,000 chicken thieves in jail? Tell me the logic.? Aren’t they both thieves??

Justice therefore means that what you do for one big thief must be done for the smaller thief too. Otherwise, the decision-maker becomes unjust, either intentionally, by error, or simply by strategy.

Uganda to the urban masses is now a land where ANY crime can be forgiven by the President, IF you are not impoverished by the new saying “Omugaga tasibwa” taking center stage in oral records. Such a judgment on this regime of ours will never go away, as crime usually has real victims who are affected and may need everlasting solace in sustainable justice as perceived by the majority, not the minority.

What does it merit for one president to pardon your sins (without elaborating why) only to be jailed 20 years from now by another leader for the same crime due to the fact that the former leader’s decisions were personal and not national binding or even consultative for that matter?  Even when you have all the authority in a home as the Father to make any decisions you want, it is always wise to consult your wife, children, and even neighbors and clan mates (the afflicted), if indeed you intend your decision to last longer than your few breaths on this planet. That is the advice for all justice officers in this regiment. One day, you will vomit justice itself, but in another tune.

So political analysts usually ask and wonder how Bobi Wine got 35 percent in the national elections against the,’almighty’ Gen Museveni, who has vividly worked and developed Uganda. The answer is simple: to eliminate a perceived UNJUST leader and his systems. The growing opposition in Uganda has and will never have anything to do with ‘development’, poverty, security, or peace; therefore, it has nothing to do with justice, which is real and not merely imagined like others.

What the population needs to observe is fair and just leadership in real practice, and I am afraid NRM has been one poor leader in this department.

When humans, such as those in Buganda (central Africa), develop and grow past poverty, they stop expecting what they already have, like money, and only humanity, morality, and justice from anyone who leads or will ever lead them.

To these citizens, Gen. Museveni and the NRM are not such leaders at this point in time and will never be due to records. It’s on record that those we harass daily by Uganda Police as ‘idle and disorderly” will NEVER vote for NRM or Museveni, and these form the majority of urban unemployed youth.

Remember, at the police station, these people are literally robbed of all that their few impoverished available relatives have to have them released (or they are remanded to Luzira), while the elites get presidential-like pardons, which will come due to connections. This Gamba Nogu kind of justice will expire soon, not because I want it to, but because the affected number will reach a carrying capacity above, which is a tipping point of no return.

The answer to the Acholi vs. Uganda NRM support paradox therefore lies in justice.

Since the north of Uganda had been a center of war for over 15 years, inevitably, martial law prevailed. When you interview a typical Northerner who dislikes Movement, the story shall always be linked to’my someone was, for no reason.”

It’s understandable that during a war, injustice cases tend to rise due to many factors. When war stopped and NRM withdrew her war machinery and Intel as well as a vividly unjust crime hunting machinery (or reformed it), that is when NRM began getting votes in the North, then brought the injustice to Buganda.

Buganda is therefore like Gulu was for 15 years, for reasons I cannot comprehend.

You see snipers on roof tops and mambas in thousands driving through KAMPALA for even the most soft threat. Such a warzone will never vote for the one who commands such a war.  The war contains arbitrary arrests, stray bullets, fake government soldiers masquerading as rebels, rebel propaganda blaming the NRA for what Kony was doing, etc.

In the case of modern and more educated BUGANDA, they are observing justice as applied to others who wrong them, e.g., land grabbers, vote thieves and bribers, arbitrary detention and robbery of BUGANDA youth by the Ugandan Police (and Intel) system, to mention but a few. You know all of them, as you have a relative, friend, or son who is a victim of Uganda’s unjust crime intelligence and operations.

To see what Nalufenya did to an NRM leader of a majority is what will remain alive for ten thousands of years among the minds of the people.  As such, vivid injustice is sanctioned by the government in power.

So, you know, I am not lying. If you don’t, then you are more likely the Gamba Nogu they talk about in Ugandan injustice and impunity folklore, and your progress is therefore unsustainable.

Yet let me ask you: if Gen. Muhwezi could enter Luzira, know that none of you will ever be safe from Luzira as we upgrade her under the same unjust terms.

Democracy is all about justice and has nothing to do with merely queuing up to vote. The day the majority begins observing you or your works, plans, or actions  as JUST is the beginning of your true power over them, and the reverse is very true too. That’s why we don’t have IDI Amin today. Not that he could not hold elections or that any Ugandan gives a damn about elections when injustice smells like rotten carcasses from your stilling room to the top of Mount Rwenzori. A just dictator who captures power is better than an unjust, unfair populist voted into power by the masses. Always..

The author is Prof. Jago Minyang Makombo Asiimwe, the Global Political Strategist of the Africa Continental Unity Party (ACUP), the First Intercontinental African Unity Political Party.

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