Professor Joe Oloka Onyango Presents The Inaugural School Of Law Staff Seminar
Professor Joe Oloka took lead on the 5th of May 2016 when he made the inaugural staff lecture at the School of Law.
The presentation that was made before fellow academic members of staff on a paper entitled ‘Enter the Dragon, Exit a Myth: The Contested Candidacy of John Patrick Amama Mbabazi.
According to Professor J. Oloka Onyango, the paper presented to his fellow staff was intended to generate thoughts about elections featuring among other issues the after effects of recently concluded elections.
Drawing from the historical perspective of electioneering in Uganda, Professor Oloka points out that persons in the position of secretary general have undergone challenging experience and have plied in difficult waters citing the examples of Kakonge, Grace Ibingira, FelixOmona and recently, John Patrick Amama Mbabazi.
The paper delves into a reflection on political party development in Uganda looking particularly at the issue of factionalism in the TDA, the place of women in the Mbabazi candidacy among other issue. He points out that democracy in Uganda is high dysfunctional with the rules of the elections weighted in favour of the incumbent.
He illustrates that the context of multiparty democracy in Uganda is a caricature, individual based, is anti-multiparty freedoms like the freedom of assembly as constrained by the Public Order Management Act (POMA).
It is mentioned in this paper that dubious methods were used in campaigns, characterised with dirty tricks like the brown envelopes, bribery,It is mentioned in this paper that dubious methods were used in campaigns, characterised with dirty tricks like the brown envelopes, bribery, Bishops Pajeros, threats to service delivery and many others, all undertaken with impunity.
The Judiciary has not been spared either, says Professor Oloka. He cites the example of the injunctions posed by Hon. Justice Kavuma against the opposition groups.
On the development of Multiparty politics in Uganda, Prof. Oloka has reservations. NRM remains a state party and that it has not developed capacity to accommodate diversity.
The deeply enlightening paper was discussed by Mr. Benson Tusasirwe who associated with a number of statements made in the presentation. He described the end of John Patrick Amama as the end of an era and that as a political factor, he is dead and buried. He mentioned that the fact that President Museveni brought down his contemporary John Patrick Amama down is ironical because ideally, he is also bringing himself down.
Further, he said as bad regimes go down, they go along with Institutions and so a number of institutions are dysfunctional. He pointed out that John Patrick Amama did not represent change a tall and that there was no justification for people to follow him. Mr. Tusasirwe pointed out that as a candidate, JPAM had a personal lack of Charisma and message, had no agenda and could not be a candidate for transformation and above all, he was not an easy person to love.
He had bad strategy for instance creating an impression that he had a lot of money and presenting himself as a comprador as compared to President Museveni’s Personal attributes like charisma which worked much as his style of leadership is lacking.
The JPAM experiment, he said, means change will not come from NRM. The relative success from FDC as an opposition is the way to go as long as the opposition ceases from being a Kampala affair.
