Building a Culture of Law-Governed State

Building a culture of a law-governed state


I have read many opinion articles in the New Vision Online and each has a recommendation, an explanation or as the column suggests, each has an opinion about a certain aspect of Uganda’s numerous challenges. I have gone through the list of articles one week, and it is quite diverse with authors making attempts at highlighting our problems and also offering some useful insights. I have found this particular undertaking very exciting and it has renewed my hopes for a future for our children. This is motivated by the fact that if we get more enlightened and informed voices on the salient issues affecting our country, perhaps, we could realise a desirable social change. I have read and critically evaluated the arguments in the following opinion articles:
• Time to revisit Museveni HIV/AIDS approach
• Do human rights abusers and despots live only in Africa?
• Maximum restraint and reconciliation are inevitable
• The increasing commercial sex work: What can government do?
• Time to deliver for girls, women
• A4C actions foreign backed
• Ugandans need skilling
• Use Kony film to up tourism numbers to Uganda
• Step up fight against Tuberculosis
• Political leaders need dialogue, not hostility
All these writings and the ideas expressed therein are good in themselves and they highlight the problems that we face as a country and the possible solutions. This means that many Ugandans are conscious of the challenges that we face as a nation and they try to suggest thinkable solutions that we can apply to overcome them. But they cannot translate into policy action since the constitutional infrastructure is enfeebled by individuals who place themselves above it. I find it that many Ugandan writers use informative language other than the performative which ought to influence policy and the direction of national events.
However I would like to maintain that the one particular aspect which is critically important to the development and stability of any country, but missing in many of our writings and speeches, is the right culture that supports a law-governed state. When the current constitution was enacted on September 22, 1995 and promulgated on October 8, 1995 it created the understanding that finally Uganda has become a sustainable, just, law-governed society founded on constitutionalism. Those of us who believe in the strict following of the rule of law thought that the constitution is the supreme arbiter and guide in all people’s lives and experiences. But on many occasions it has been trashed, altered, reviewed in order to serve some narrow interests. If one follows the events as reported in the media about land grabbing, demonstrations, protests, police brutality, oil deals, power-struggles among politicians and civil servants and the blatant culture of corruption at all levels, is all indicative of a vacuum in our rule-of-law structures.
The Ugandan constitution of 1995 is built on those properties that over a long period have been taken to define the very essence of constitutionalism, that is, constitution-making power of the people and about which there is a broad consensus. If we take the following tenets as basic to modern constitutionalism: First, the claim that the arbitrary will of the political rulers must be submitted to rules. This could be expressed differently as a government under law, a rule that governs the governors or in a more pointed version, the rule of law and not of men. Second, that constitutionalism implies the principle of popular sovereignty. This follows from the premise that in modern societies, of which Uganda claims a position, the ‘people’ is the ultimate of sovereign power; by sovereign I mean being self-determining, self-governing or independent. The third essential element of constitutionalism is the idea of limited government. This means that both the purposes of government, and the instruments available to power-holders to realise those purposes, are de-lineated – something implicit in the term ‘constituted power’. This entails some kind of separation of powers. Again constitutional government calls for rules which define accountability of the rulers to the citizenry.
As Uganda celebrates 50 years of Independence, we, Ugandans must re-invent ourselves as a law-governed society. It has been observed that almost all developed and emerging economies where poverty is virtually eradicated and people are lifted out of poverty, the secret is through the development of a strong law-governed state with individual freedoms, property rights and civil society institutions. If we are to set priorities for the next fifty (50) years of Uganda’s independence, our primary concern should be to build Ugandan values and build a law-governed state as part of the social vision to characterise our national identity. The rest will automatically suit!