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Uganda The National Resistance Council
Since independence Uganda's governments have been
ambivalent
about the principle of parliamentary supremacy.
Subscribing at
first to the British model of government, the 1962
constitution
made the prime minister and the cabinet collectively
responsible
to the parliament. The 1967 constitution provided for a
far more
powerful executive president while continuing to pay lip
service
to the principle of parliamentary supremacy. Following Idi
Amin's
graphic demonstration of the dangers of a chief executive
who
ignores the rule of law, the Moshi Declaration, which
created the
Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) government in 1979
to
replace Amin, put supreme power in its parliament. The
1967
constitution was restored by the UPC when it returned to
power in
December 1980. In its 1986 proclamation, the NRM
government once
again placed the supreme authority of government in the
NRC, the
parliament it had created during the war. But despite its
formal
importance, the NRC met rarely for the first year of NRM
rule and
played an insignificant role in directing the government.
For
example, it did not even debate the budget of May 1986
(although
it did debate the August 1986 revision).
At the time the NRM government seized power, the
thirty-eight
leading cadres in the NRA and the NRM formed the
membership of
the NRC by virtue of service, not elections. For the first
year,
they continued to be the only members of the NRC.
Meanwhile,
applying the principle of broad-based government meant
that most
senior ministers were appointed from outside the ranks of
the
NRM. Governance became particularly awkward for two
reasons.
First, the cabinet, rather than the NRC, was taking most
policy
initiatives. Second, cabinet members were excluded from
the
supreme authority of government. The situation was
rectified by
expanding the NRC in April 1987 to include all ministers
and
their deputies, enlarging the NRC to more than seventy
members.
Then as the ranks of ministerial appointments grew in
response to
negotiations with more opponents of the government, the
NRC
automatically expanded as well. After that, the NRC met
more
frequently but often failed to achieve a quorum because so
many
of its members had official obligations elsewhere.
Frustrated by
low attendance over the following year, Haji Moses
Kigongo, vice
chair of the NRM and chair at most of the NRC meetings,
warned in
May 1988 that he would suspend members who missed three
consecutive meetings. The next day only fifteen members
showed
up, and that session, too, was canceled for lack of a
quorum. On
occasion the NRC managed to hold meetings with lively
debates and
passed legislation in many areas, but few Ugandans would
have
described it as the nerve center of the government.
In February 1989, new legislation recognized the
appointments
of the original thirty-eight members of the NRC and
provided for
the enlargement of the NRC through the election and
appointment
of additional members. Each county and each district would
elect
one representative (only women could be candidates for
district
representative). In addition, one or more of the
representatives
would be elected by municipalities, depending upon the
size of
their populations. Provision also was made for five
representatives elected by a youth organization and three
elected
by a workers organization. (But the act did not make clear
whether the organizations whose members would comprise the
electorate would be existing youth and worker
organizations or
new ones.) The legislation providing for the elections
also
created thirty new appointed representatives to the NRC,
twenty
appointed by the president and ten by the NRAC from the
ranks of
NRA officers.
Thus, in response to widespread criticism that the 1967
constitution had given too much power to the president,
the NRM
put supreme power entirely in the hands of the new
parliament but
limited its membership at first to its own trusted
followers. The
original parliamentary representatives were legitimized by
their
participation in the guerrilla struggle, not by elections.
Though
political figures who had not been part of the NRM or NRA
during
the war were later appointed to the NRC and in 1989
elected to
it, the original NRC members continued to occupy a
privileged
position. They did not have to stand for election to the
NRC. In
addition, their special status was formalized in February
1989
with the creation of the National Executive Committee
(NEC), a
standing committee of the NRC, to contain these original
members
plus one elected member from each district and ten members
appointed by the chair of the NRC from among its members.
Because
the purposes of the NEC were to "determine the policies
and
political direction" of the NRM and "monitor and oversee
the
general performance of the Government," it acquired both a
formal
vanguard role within the NRC and a powerful position to
set the
political agenda. But in 1990, it remained unclear whether
the
NEC would exercise this power to press for the
implementation of
the Ten-Point Program.
Data as of December 1990
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