Museveni’s order to police is risky

Ochola not giving orders?

According to some observers, part of police’s challenge in managing the politics in the run-up to 2021 is the management style of IGP Ochola and his deputy, Sabiiti.

Ochola, insiders and ordinary observers say, is the complete opposite of his predecessor, Gen. Kale Kayihura. Where Kale was seen as a politician—a cadre of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), Ochola presents a fascade of professional policing. Sabiiti does not hide his NRM cadre credential but equally prefers to operate behind the scenes.

Commenting on the media shy-duo, Jude Kagoro, a professor at Bremen University, who has researched Uganda police and served as an instructor at the Bwebajja-based police academy, says the main difference between Kale and Ochola is that the former was more known, much more emphatic, and was a politician.

He says Ochola might, in fact, not be giving many of the orders at police today.

He says while police as an institution operates under command and control—with orders from above—individual police officers also have discretionary powers. This means that, during operations, when they rarely have enough time to wait for orders, they tend to make decisions on their own.

In the Uganda Police case, they tend to make decisions that they think could give them mileage as individuals and avoid those that might destroy them.

“Officers are always in a very fluid and delicate situation all the time. You give a wrong order, you are in trouble, you don’t give any order you are in trouble,” Kagoro says, “If Besigye is whipped and nothing happens, the officers are likely to continue doing that.”

Kagoro adds: “Ochola loves structures and from conversations with officers, you get a sense that they have been empowered to take decisions on their own”. For some, the result is a force that appears publicly to be without direction.

“Kale used to interrupt officers a lot,” Kagoro says. While many saw this as a negative thing, others claim that it meant that under Kayihura, decisions were centralised, clear, and bore authority. They claim that that may be lacking today.

On April 29, for example, when the police arrested Bobi Wine at Mulago Roundabout in Kampala as he headed to CID headquarters where he had been summoned to record a statement, the Police Spokesman, CP Fred Enanga issued a statement.

He said Bobi Wine would be slapped with “additional charges of holding an illegal assembly and procession, after he was accused of organising his supporters to escort him along the way”.

But when Bobi Wine appeared before Buganda Road Court, Enanga’s claims appeared totally false. The singer turned politician was charged only with disobedience of statutory duty over an incident from July 2018. Such incidents make Enanga look bad. They also discredit the police leadership’s authority.

Police’s unwritten mission

When Ochola and Sabiiti were appointed on March 4, 2018, many celebrated their appointment and hoped the police could be transformed from a force known more for persecution of the opposition rather than fighting of crime. Little, it appears, has changed on the crime scene and the targeting of opposion politicians has worsened.

In a recent case of torture, the police at their HQ in Naguru, Kampala, pounced on a known activist called Nana Mbarikiwa, who is said to be seven months pregnant, and teargased her until she passed out and had to be hospitalised.

In another case, police shot dead one Ronald Sebulime in assassination style in broad-day in Mukono. He was suspected of trailing cabinet minister Agnes Nantaba and had been arrested and handcuffed when he was executed.

“It was always naïve to think that anything would change under Ochola,” says opposition stalwart Muwanga Kivumbi, who is the Butambala County MP, “It is a question of mandate. The unwritten mission of police is very clear. It is regime protection and consolidation,” he adds.

Kivumbu

POLICE

’s views on security matters are respected because he has been Shadow minister of Defence and is also a member of the Defence and Internal Affairs Committee of parliament that monitors all security agencies.

He has built a legislative career of campaigning against the excesses of security agencies.

From that vantage point, Kivumbi says any political police such as Uganda’s, with a mission of consolidating the regime, would always behave the same way irrespective of who is its head.

Kivumbi says if regime protection had not been the sacred mission of police, Ochola’s predecessor; Kayihura, would not have lasted as IGP with that level of impunity for 13 years.

He said that stick-wielding goons and teargas started under former Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) Gen. Katumba Wamala when he was IGP. Kayihura succeeded Katumba in 2005 until the former was fired on March 4 last year and replaced with Ochola.

“The very first time we saw stick wielding operatives leaving a police station to come and beat people was under Katumba,” Muwanga said, “Kale only gained more trust and perfected the mission. Ochola is a professional with the same purpose. It is business as usual.”