Owiny Dollo. How does a chief judge function under a lawless regime? Photo: Twitter.
The constitutionally irrefragable responsibility of Ugandan judiciary to protect citizens against the unlawful or arbitrary acts of the Army and Police has dwindled and the honorable Chief Justice, Owiny Dollo Alphonse, owes us a reasonable explanation as to why he must not voluntarily bow out from his office rather than continuing to head an institution that is docile. The Ugandan judiciary is an institution that has unfortunately become acquiescent to external arm-twisting in total disregard of its Constitutionally mandated independence.
The long rumored invisible hand of the deep state in external subjugation is now visible and has unscrupulously nibbled away at the independence of the third arm of the government, and recently the barbarism of the state flourishes without being checked by the judiciary.
It is undoubtedly proven that only an independent judiciary can protect citizens from arbitrary state impunity and that doesn’t require rocket science for any judicial officer to fathom. Conceivably, the problem is that these judicial officers may want to act in such a manner in order to be coddled by the ‘deity’ that benefits from such an ensnared judiciary.
We, the citizens of Uganda, have nowhere to run to anymore when we are continuously enfolded in the state’s labyrinth of failure to honor its obligations as elucidated in the social contract.
The constitution of the Republic of Uganda 1995 as amended recognizes the tripartite structure and independence of state institutions—the executive, judiciary and legislature—but the judiciary has become another appurtenance of the executive.
Lately, there is this barbaric method that the state is using against the disgruntled citizens who blow off steam protesting the negligence and oppression. When we are violently kidnapped and bundled into waiting numberless drones, we are not taken to Cafe Javas to eat Pizza! We are driven into torture chambers where we are mutilated incommunicado in total disregard of the law. That is why they return us when we are half dead.
When we are then smuggled into these Courts after the inviolable 48-hour rule has elapsed, the magistrates fold hands and zip their mouths yet are supposed to enforce the human rights laws.
Myself, in February was smuggled into court—after 14 days in illegal detention—oozing pus and swollen from torture, but Dr. Douglas Singiza gave my tormentors a platform to desecrate judicial independence in lieu of sacromentalizing the same, and when I complained to the service commission, my petition was never given a modicum of audience.
These magistrates have turned courts into adjuncts of the deep state to proliferate abuses against victims of such insufferable barbarism by denying them bail, or if they pretend to care, they give victims absolutely unaffordable bail in order to deter or demoralize other citizens from holding the government accountable.
Reference is made from the recent case in which Dr. Kizza Besigye was arrested from downtown and upon appearing before Buganda Road magistrate, was given a cash bail of 30 million Ugandan shillings, which is about $8,000 or 10 times the country’s per capita income, which he refused to pay and instructed his lawyers to seek judicial review. Such a cash bail for someone who is protesting against high prices of commodities? These magistrates are shameless chamchas!
Another scenario was when the deputy lord mayor of Kampala, Hon. Doreen Nyanjura and Soroti City Woman Member of Parliament, Anna Adeke Ebaju, were arrested while protesting the unlivable conditions and upon being produced to the Court, were denied bail because the magistrate needed a week to scrutinize the submitted LC letters of sureties. A whole week?
In the event that bail was meant to be punitive, then the whole concept of innocent until proven guilty—which was coined by Sir William Garrow during a 1791 trial at the Old Bailey—would be rather otiose.
One of the respected law scientists of the 21st century and former justice of the Constitutional Court of the Federal Republic of Germany, Prof. Dr Michael Eichberger, once noted that the independent courts can only exist in a state governed by the rule of law, and the rule of law is not possible without an independent judiciary.
When you listen to such legal aficionado individuals elucidating the role of the judiciary in enforcing human rights and rule of law, and then look back at our judicial officers in Uganda, you wonder when we shall ever extricate our country from the manacles of despicable injustice.
I reminisce that through my years in Law School, I never used any Ugandan constitutional case law as reference, because judicial decisions from Uganda—especially since 2000—are not decided with upright minds but corrupt and subservient psyches, and these individuals have the machismo to masquerade around as honorable judicial officers when their actions depict dishonorable toadying.
Judicial officers beating drums for the state’s impunity to bloom have greatly pilloried the judiciary as an institution and pinned it to the citadel of bias for the entire world to witness learned people turn a respectable arm of government into something akin to a council of fools.
Rukirabashaija is Scholar on Writers in Exile Program of PEN-Zentrum Deutschland.
He is a survivor of torture at the hands of Ugandan dictator Gen. Yoweri Museveni’s regime and his son Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
Full profile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakwenza_Rukirabashaija
