Genuine electoral reforms needed

The Attorney General was ordered to furnish Court with updates on the progress made in addressing the above within two years. Game Changers (an Activist Group) in their petition reminded the Attorney General of the fast approaching deadline (August 2018). But up to now, there has not been any communication on the same by the Attorney General known to the public and if this is the case, would the Attorney General be in contempt of Court?

In addition, Parliament was occupied with lifting the age limit and extending their own tenure while ignoring the many shelved electoral reforms.

A Constitutional Review Commission was put in place to review the constitution in a bid to promote a democratic country. The Commission was received with mixed feelings as its composition was heavily contested because of the failure to represent all categories of people; especially the youth.

The Commission since its appointment in November 2018 has not started work because it requires about Shs13 Billion to kick start the work. Even if this is secured, it will take almost two years for it to do a thorough review involving wide public consultation and another one year to have the proposals debated and subsequently passed.

With reference to the 2021 elections road map, Presidential and Parliamentary candidates will be nominated in August 2020-next year and if we are a serious country that respects the international and regional charters to elections and democracy such as the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) and the people of Uganda, we should by now have concluded the preliminaries for electoral reforms.

Further, the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs has on various occasions decried the lack of funds to support the process of reviewing electoral reforms. This song is now almost three years old and we are still looking on; pretending to be a democracy.  Further, there has been a call to appoint more judges. But the response has been that the government lacks funds. What this means consequently is that we may have a situation where election petitions are delayed; thereby denying justice simply because of shortage of human resource. It is now clear that the reforms have not been given priority yet we want to participate in the coming elections.

It seems that without the reforms, the next elections will not be free and fair right from the start. To have them in this manner will be pretending that we are a democracy. If we believe in elections and democracy as a country, we then need to stop pretending about it and take these reforms seriously. They affect not only the outcome of the elections but the process as well which is equally crucial.

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Michael Aboneka is a Partner at Thomas & Michael Advocates