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Uganda UGANDA AFTER AMIN
The Interim Period: 1979-80
A month before the liberation of Kampala,
representatives of
twenty-two Ugandan civilian and military groups were
hastily
called together at Moshi, Tanzania, to try to agree on an
interim
civilian government once Amin was removed. Called the
Unity
Conference in the hope that unity might prevail, it
managed to
establish the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) as
political representative of the UNLA. Dr. Yusuf Lule,
former
principal of Makerere University, became head of the UNLF
executive committee. As an academic rather than a
politician,
Lule was not regarded as a threat to any of the contending
factions. Shortly after Amin's departure, Lule and the
UNLF moved
to Kampala, where they established an interim government.
Lule
became president, advised by a temporary parliament, the
National
Consultative Council (NCC). The NCC, in turn, was composed
of
representatives from the Unity Conference.
Conflict surfaced immediately between Lule and some of
the
more radical of the council members who saw him as too
conservative, too autocratic, and too willing as a Muganda
to
listen to advice from other Baganda. After only three
months,
with the apparent approval of Nyerere, whose troops still
controlled Kampala, Lule was forcibly removed from office
and
exiled. He was replaced by Godfrey Binaisa, a Muganda like
Lule,
but one who had previously served as a high-ranking member
of
Obote's UPC. It was not an auspicious start to the
rebuilding of
a new Uganda, which required political and economic
stability.
Indeed, the quarrels within the NCC, which Binaisa
enlarged to
127 members, revealed that many rival and would-be
politicians
who had returned from exile were resuming their
self-interested
operating styles. Ugandans who endured the deprivations of
the
Amin era became even more disillusioned with their
leaders.
Binaisa managed to stay in office longer than Lule, but
his
inability to gain control over a burgeoning new military
presence
proved to be his downfall.
At the beginning of the interim government, the
military
numbered fewer than 1,000 troops who had fought alongside
the
Tanzanian People's Defence Force (TPDF) to expel Amin. The
army
was back to the size of the original King's African Rifles
(KAR)
at independence in 1962. But in 1979, in an attempt to
consolidate support for the future, such leaders as Yoweri
Kaguta
Museveni and Major General (later Chief of Staff) David
Oyite
Ojok began to enroll thousands of recruits into what were
rapidly
becoming their private armies. Museveni's 80 original
soldiers
grew to 8,000; Ojok's original 600 became 24,000. When
Binaisa
sought to curb the use of these militias, which were
harassing
and detaining political opponents, he was overthrown in a
military coup on May 10, 1980. The coup was engineered by
Ojok,
Museveni, and others acting under the general direction of
Paulo
Muwanga, Obote's right-hand man and chair of the Military
Commission
(see The Second Obote Regime: Repression Continues
, ch. 5). The TPDF was still providing necessary security
while
Uganda's police force--which had been decimated by
Amin--was
rebuilt, but Nyerere refused to help Binaisa retain power.
Many
Ugandans claimed that although Nyerere did not impose his
own
choice on Uganda, he indirectly facilitated the return to
power
of his old friend and ally, Milton Obote. In any case, the
Military Commission headed by Muwanga effectively governed
Uganda
during the six months leading up to the national elections
of
December 1980.
Further evidence of the militarization of Ugandan
politics
was provided by the proposed expenditures of the newly
empowered
Military Commission. Security and defense were to be
allotted
more than 30 percent of the national revenues. For a
country
desperately seeking funds for economic recovery from the
excesses
of the previous military regime, this allocation seemed
unreasonable to civilian leaders.
Shortly after Muwanga's 1980 coup, Obote made a
triumphant
return from Tanzania. In the months before the December
elections, he began to rally his former UPC supporters.
Ominously, in view of recent Ugandan history, he often
appeared
on the platform with General Oyite-Ojok, a fellow Langi.
Obote
also began to speak of the need to return to a UPC
one-party
state.
The national election on December 10, 1980, was a
crucial
turning point for Uganda. It was, after all, the first
election
in eighteen years. Several parties contested, the most
important
of which were Obote's UPC and the DP led by Paul Kawanga
Ssemogerere. Most of Uganda's Roman Catholics were DP
members,
along with many others whose main concern was to prevent
the
return of another Obote regime. Because the Military
Commission,
as the acting government, was dominated by Obote
supporters
(notably chairman Paulo Muwanga), the DP and other
contenders
faced formidable obstacles. By election day, the UPC had
achieved
some exceptional advantages, summarized by Minority Rights
Group
Report Number 66 as follows: Seventeen UPC candidates were
declared "unopposed" by the simple procedure of not
allowing DP
or other candidates to run against them. Fourteen district
commissioners, who were expected to supervise local
polling, were
replaced with UPC nominees. The chief justice of Uganda,
to whom
complaints of election irregularities would have to be
made, was
replaced with a UPC member. In a number of districts,
non-UPC
candidates were arrested, and one was murdered. Even
before the
election, the government press and Radio Uganda appeared
to treat
the UPC as the victor. Muwanga insisted that each party
have a
separate ballot box on election day, thus negating the
right of
secret ballot. There were a number of other moves to aid
the UPC,
including Muwanga's statement that the future parliament
would
also contain an unspecified number of unelected
representatives
of the army and other interest groups.
Polling appeared to be heavy on election day, and by
the end
of the voting, the DP, on the basis of its own estimates,
declared victory in 81 of 126 constituencies. The British
Broadcasting Corporation and Voice of America broadcast
the news
of the DP triumph, and Kampala's streets were filled with
DP
celebrants. At this point, Muwanga seized control of the
Electoral Commission, along with the power to count the
ballots,
and declared that anyone disputing his count would be
subject to
a heavy fine and five years in jail. Eighteen hours later,
Muwanga announced a UPC victory, with seventy-two seats.
Some DP
candidates claimed the ballot boxes were simply switched
to give
their own vote tally to the UPC runner-up. Nevertheless, a
small
contingent of neutral election watchers, the Commonwealth
Observer Group, declared itself satisfied with the
validity of
the election. Some Ugandans criticized the Commonwealth
Observer
Group, suggesting that members of the group measured
African
elections by different standards than those used elsewhere
or
that they feared civil war if the results were questioned.
Indeed, popular perception of a stolen election actually
helped
bring about the civil war the Commonwealth Observer Group
may
have feared.
Data as of December 1990
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