Uganda’s NRM judiciary is on trial

On October 18, a woman named Mercy Timbitwire Bashisha was stopped by a police officer named Charles Makawa at a traffic light at the intersection of Lugogo Bypass and Jinja Road in Kampala. Makawa accused Bashisha of reckless driving, driving and talking at the same time. Bashisha was asked to get out of her car, a white Toyota Land Cruiser.

The video clip of Bashisha beating Makawa and reportedly robbing his mobile phone and EPS gadget was recorded by an anonymous witness. As is common these days, the video was posted on social media and quickly spread around the world, or in internet parlance, “went viral.” Bashisha was arrested, taken to the Nakawa Magistrate’s Court, charged with assault and remanded to Luzira Prison until November 4. The matter became a public issue, including in Parliament, where various MPs took turns apologizing to Makawe on behalf of Ugandan women for Bashisha’s behavior.

Makawa himself was praised on social media, by the police and in Parliament for showing remarkable restraint in the face of Bashisha’s attack. So far so good. A shining example of how today’s smartphones work wonders and capture such moments. Over the past decade, these ubiquitous smartphones have helped capture so many accidents, acts of racist police brutality in the United States, pickpockets, careless drivers. and much more. The Ugandan police officer demonstrated his professionalism by not retaliating against the alleged attack by Bashisha, and the Ugandan courts did their job by charging her. It turns out that the story is not as clear-cut as it seems.

On Thursday 24 October, Daily Monitor columnist Nicholas Sengoba posted a separate video of the same incident in Lugogo involving Bashishi and Makawa on his X/Twitter page. The video, also filmed on a smartphone, shows the alleged scenes moments before Bashisha began lashing out. in Makawa. The second video shows a police officer allegedly beating Bashisha. From a forensic perspective, the question arises: which of the two videos was taken first: the one of Bashisha attacking the policeman, or the new one of the policeman attacking Bashisha?

I brought all this up to show the complexity of today’s world. Things are not quite what they seem. The ubiquitous smartphone, which now does so much to spontaneously capture moments and incidents almost everywhere, may capture one moment, but failing to capture several previous moments can leave the public with an incomplete and inaccurate picture. a look at what really happened.

Before I saw the video Sengoba shared, I tweeted the following sentence: “One law that the Uganda Law Society President (Isaac Ssemakadde) should help repeal is that it prohibits the media from discussing matters in court. Our legal system is so corrupt that justice could be better served by opening the trial to the court of public opinion.” Opposition Platform for National Unity (PNU).

Olivia Lutaaya and 27 other NPP supporters appeared before the General Military Tribunal in Makindye on September 9 for the 56th time to answer charges for which no trial has begun since their arrest in 2021. They have maintained their innocence since 2021. In a statement on September 10, NUP President Robert Kyagulanyi said: “We have been informed that emissaries of the regime have been secretly reaching out to these comrades and their relatives, threatening them with even harsher punishment if they do not plead guilty to the charges trumped up against them. .

The emissaries also continued to harass them to give up the party lawyers who represented them in exchange for military lawyers.” told me that she decided to plead guilty in order to regain her freedom, she broke down and cried, but added: (Hon.), I’ve been here for four years!”

Youth Minister Balaam Barugahara visited Kitalya Prison on October 13 and reportedly asked NUP supporters to plead guilty so that they could be granted freedom. Lutaaya and 15 other PNU supporters pleaded guilty to the charges in a court-martial on October 14. PNU lawyer Marvin Saasi and PNU general secretary David Rubongoya attended the military tribunal on 14 October. Saasi tweeted: “(We) went to the military tribunal today… and found Olivia Lutaaya (and) other political prisoners. . He (Barugahara) asked Olivia if she pleaded guilty.

“Yes,” she replied. He repeated his question twice. She confirmed her answer.” What then happened in Quitaglia prison on October 13? The sequence of events and the general background clearly indicate that Balaam Barugahara, on his own initiative, entered into plea negotiations with PNU supporters or was sent by the Government. In a particularly cruel and cynical turn, instead of holding up its end of the plea bargain, the state used these guilty pleas—obtained not necessarily through physical torture, but through the use of traumatized PNU members—as “evidence.” Since mid-2021, the state has been unable to issue what on paper looked like legal convictions. On October 23, the General Military Tribunal sentenced 16 NUP supporters to three months and 22 days in prison for attempting to overthrow the government. and possession of bombs and other explosive devices.

It is unclear whether Barugahara initiated the plea deal as a personal act out of sympathy for his role as Youth Minister, or whether the NWO State asked him to lead the move and then the State went behind his back and used the confessions to convict PNU supporters. This is the legal environment in which we live and it explains why the most incredible maverick, Ssemakadde, was elected President of the Uganda Law Society by a margin of 69.5 percent. This is not just ordinary political debate and agitation. . Uganda lives under an autocratic regime that is quickly turning into a fascist regime.

The arbitrariness with which government officials are dismissed by appointing authorities, the gross injustice faced by thousands of Ugandans uprooted from their land, and the sheer broad daylight impunity we experience daily in public life cannot help but signal that the state is approaching a turning point. moment. To be fair, in the case of Mercy Bashisha, the state acted in good faith and with a sense of justice. However, as I explained at the beginning, the second video changes the whole story and shows why the government needs its own investigative apparatus.

Finally, the way I have combined these two cases, Bashish and the PNU supporters, is proof enough of why the judiciary can no longer be the sole arbiter of justice. should concern every lawyer, government prosecutor, journalist, political party activist, human rights activist and Western diplomat. Previous opposition petitions after the election were rejected on the grounds that the evidence presented was “insufficient” to overturn the election results.

Considering that the prying eyes of smartphones are everywhere these days and occasionally snatch important evidence, as in the case of Bashisha, shouldn’t we, the casual citizens, journalists and idle passersby, be given a greater say in court cases? What would that give us? The Nakawa Magistrate’s Court is thinking after reading this new evidence I have presented in the Bashish case, thanks to the chance of being Senghoba’s columnist and also piecing together valuable snippets of Twitter testimony from Bobi Wine, Marvin Saasi and Doreen Nyanjura. “We have seen many cases of arrest and re-arrest of former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) President Kizza Besigye at the High Court in November 2005 and the new norm of suspects being re-arrested after the High Court had just granted them bail.

It is therefore a fact that the biggest problem facing the Ugandan courts today is not the court’s subordination to the media, but total impunity, pressure on judges and military incursions into court premises by the NRM state.

The reason I am so interested in the law, the courts and the recent Uganda Law Society elections is because the NLM state uses the law and the courts to give their autocratic tendencies a veneer of respectability and commitment to the legal process.