Focus on Rights

African similarities and lessons to learn

Monday December 11, Kampala, Uganda

The quip made by an immigration officer as I enter Uganda is classic. In the first instance and quite unlike your normal officer at the barrier, he is both talkative and compulsively informative. "How is your girl?" he asks me, Caught off guard, I look astonished until he explains that what he means is "How is my leader?" Answering in the same spirit, I ask him in return " And how is your boy?" to which question he remarks instantly that his boy has become afflicted with the African syndrome.

Again I am winded and wonder in a split second first whether the African syndrome is another mysterious virus like Ebola, second as to why I was not warned about it before I travelled to the country and third whether it is easily communicable.

Putting me out of my misery, he explains again that the African syndrome basically means an overstaying of one's welcome. Given the fact that the Ugandan Presidential Elections are just round the corner, I am understandably a triffle unnerved by this comment of a distinctly non -immigration kind and pass on quickly. It does not take me long however to discover that this encounter is very symbolic of the dry humour of the inhabitants of this Eastern African country, harbouring the source of the Nile and famously referred to by Winston Churchill as the pearl of Africa.

In many senses, the similarities between Uganda and Sri Lanka are not merely in terms of physical beauty. Uganda has, of course, an extraordinarily violent past. The report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Violation of Human Rights which investigated the worst period between 1962 and 1986 cites over 15,000 pages of documented human rights violations including the use of unlawful and arbitrary detention, the torture of prisoners, poor prison conditions, the rampant existence of corruption, the banning of political parties, the lack of independence of the judiciary, the deprivation of the right to property and the stiffling of the freedom of the press.

The best known of these abuses outside the country was Idi Amin's decision in 1972 to summarily expel all Asians from the country in an effort to "africanise the economy."

This disrespect for human rights continued until the 1980 elections which were declared by Commonwealth observers to be "relatively fair" (familiar terminology, it seems) but were rejected internally as being irreparably rigged leading to a bush war by the National Resistance Army (NRA) and culminating in the NRM government coming into power in 1986 with a new Constitution being enacted in 1995.

Notably an improvement on its predecessors, the Constitution provided for a full range of human rights protection and accountability structures such as the Human Rights Commission and an Inspector General of Governance who was entrusted with the promotion of civilised government and the specific prosecution of human rights abusers.

The Constitution also provided for the President and the Parliament to be directly elected through the vote. It did not however remove the ban from political parties, allowed the use of the death penalty and continued with the Public Order and Security Act which authorised persons to be held in indefinite detention. Since then, the past ten years have illustrated that improved constitutional structures have been insufficient to promote political stability and rights development. Conflict in the country continues though it has been contained to some extent right now and kept away from Kampala. It was only last year however that bomb attacks in Kampala marked the extension to the capital of wars involving armed opposition movements operating out of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the support of the Sudanese government. Fighting between the government and armed opposition groups now take place in the north, north west and western parts of the country.

Indeed the issues and the reactions of the government to these issues bring with them an extraordinary feeling of déjà vu. In the first instance, the conflict has led to thousands of displaced persons and allegations of violations of international human rights standards and Ugandan constitutional provisions by the government of current President Yoveri Mouseveni and his security forces. In 1999 alone, soldiers and police have been cited as being responsible for more than forty extra judicial executions though legal action has not been taken against the alleged perpetrators. Twenty eight prisoners were executed in the first such executions since 1996 and intense lobbying of the government by the astonishingly vibrant civil rights community in the country continues on this resumption of executions.

Meanwhile armed opposition groups like the Lord's Resistance Army and the Allied Democratic Front have been responsible for gross human rights abuses including forced conscription, child abduction, beatings and rape and deliberate and arbitrary killings.

In the second instance, the clampdown by the government against the media has been unprecedentedly strong in recent times invoking again that feeling of déjà vu.On the one hand, Uganda has one of the most liberalised media sectors in Africa. Radio and television stations open at will, having to fulfil only some procedural requirements. However, newspaper publishers, editors and reporters are continually threatened with criminal libel and other sanctions for what's termed as "negative, alarmist and antagonistic" reportage. Outdated sedition laws under the country's Penal Code have been successively used against them. One particularly outrageous instance was the prosecution of the editor of the "Shariat" for publication of a politically satirical column on the President. He was sentenced to five months imprisonment and fined. His appeal against this judgement was dismissed thereafter. The media continues meanwhile to be subject to a restrictive Official Secrets Act which together with the lack of an information policy continues to render an explicit constitutional right to freedom of information totally ineffective in actual practice.

The divide between the government media and the private media is also clearly evident with however the difference that the government media is more apt than in this country to take on issues that antagonise the government as was evidenced just last week when three columnists in the New Vision was asked to withdraw their columns reportedly for being too critical of the government.

Comment

Rehabilitating parliamentarians

By Victor Ivan

A research officer is to be added to the staff of each MP. The addition of a research officer alone will not bring about a qualitative change in the work of parliamentarians. What is necessary is to see that the available staff functions properly than increase the numbers.

Every MP is entitled to a staff consisting of a secretary, stenographer and a Karyala Karya Sahayaka. The purpose of providing an MP with this kind of staff is to help him serve the public efficiently. However the government, instead of providing the MPs with a suitable and experienced staff from amongst the public servants, gives the MP the right to recruit his or her own staff. This sometimes results in MPs recruiting staff from amongst their own families. This affects the efficiency of the MPs. If the MPs right to recruit their own staff is abolished and public servants from a government reserve are made available to them, it would probably make them more efficient.

Sri Lanka is the only country where MPs get a duty free luxury car once in five years. Most MPs believe that a good vehicle is essential to serve the people efficiently. But these vehicles are not used for public service but are sold at a higher price to buy an ordinary car at a lesser price. However according to the law in the country, it is illegal to sell or transfer vehicles that MPs get.

A few weeks ago the government confiscated two vehicles worth about six million rupees each used by Aravinda de Silva and a close relation and fined them Rs. 300,000 each on the grounds that they had purchased and used vehicles which had been imported duty free for another institution. But it is unjust to say the least that this same law does not apply to MPs.

Under the assets and liabilities law all candidates contesting presidential, parliamentary and provincial council elections must submit declarations of their assets and that of their spouses and their children to the Commissioner of Elections, while the elected representatives must submit such declarations every year to the authority specified by law. According to that law the declarations must include details of bank accounts and their final balances, landed properties, purchases and sales. Failure to submit declarations of assets and liabilities and failure to include necessary particulars or inclusion of erroneous information is considered to be a serious offence that could result in imprisonment or deprivation of civic rights.

The public also has the right to obtain on payment a copy of such a declaration made by anyone .

This law of assets and liabilities is so vital that even the immunity enjoyed by a president does not affect this law. But even that law does not operate properly in this country.

It may be observed that some ministers who were not affluent when they came to power have built not ordinary houses but mansions a few years after coming to power. The question is how they manage to earn so much of wealth in such a short time. Although the best way to find answers to such questions would be to examine their declarations of assets and liabilities, the Presidential Secretariat follows a policy of abstaining from answering any query in that regard.

In Britain there is a special institutional system of parliament itself to consider complaints made by the people against MPs. When there are complaints of a serious nature, the institution concerned holds an inquiry about the MP and conveys to Parliament the conclusion arrived at.

Why cannot we have such a system?

Such action would bring about an institutional system to which the people can make complaints if MPs are elected through malpractice, earn wealth through undue means or effect undue pressures. Such a reform would arrest the decline that has occurred in the morality of the people's representatives.

The writer is the editor of Ravaya.