{"id":9152,"date":"2021-04-27T15:55:54","date_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/?p=9152"},"modified":"2021-04-27T15:20:06","modified_gmt":"2021-04-27T15:20:06","slug":"an-audit-of-2021-general-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\/all-news\/an-audit-of-2021-general-election","title":{"rendered":"An audit of 2021 General Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/\">Africa-Press<\/a> &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/uganda\">Uganda<\/a>. <\/strong><\/span>Every election brings to the fore lessons, exposes deep rooted social and political problems that demand solutions. Uganda\u2019s 2021 general elections brought to the fore six fundamental aspects all central to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 16-of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, and also building effective, inclusive and accountable institutions at all levels.<\/p>\n<p>The elections manifested the contestation between the forces of achieving peace, justice and strong institutions in Uganda\u2019s democratisation journey on one hand and menacingly advancing forces of vicious militarisation on the other hand. The dominance of the security agencies all superintended over by the military laid bare this spectacle. Here are some of the major manifestations of militarisation in the elections.<\/p>\n<p>Trial of civilians in military courts. This manifested through the opportunistic deployment of the entire military justice system to harass, and settle political contestations not the mandate of the military courts. To this end, we have witnessed civilian supporters of Robert Kyagulanyi and the National Unity Party tried under the UPDF law. The cloak of national security, an amorphous term employed by the State to fit the times has been adopted to justify this misnomer.<\/p>\n<p>Heightened militarisation of the police. This manifested more emphatically with the deployment of more high ranking military officials to very strategic leadership and command positions of the Uganda Police Force. Questions abound as to whether military skills are ideal for civilian oriented public order management which requires de-escalation mechanisms than lethal force as we have witnessed.<\/p>\n<p>Threats of violence and police intimidation. The election was characterized by militant inflammatory \u2018fear and threat\u2019 statements from the top brass of the military promising to unleash terror on those with divergent opinions about the elections. This option for intimidation anchored on extreme militancy with threats of violence, rather than reconciliatory discourse, fostered a climate of fear.<\/p>\n<p>Re-emergency of militia and other ambiguous \u201csecurity\u201d groups. These have been cited by victims and witnesses of enforced disappearances. They used dark tinted \u2018drone\u2019 vans, as commonly called, with no registration numbers, heavily armed and seemingly answering not to even police, clad in civilian clothes, sometimes military and police uniform with masked faces. This blurred the chain of command within these agencies as pitted against the Uganda Police Force that is meant to be the lead agency in such internal operations of law and order.<\/p>\n<p>Brutal enforcement of the Covid-19 guidelines. For almost every human rights violation that has manifested in the elections\u2019 cycle-the enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings, there is a traceable direct correlation with heightened militarisation of civic and political spaces.<\/p>\n<p>Militarised youth response. This election further revealed the very acrimonious-charged section of the public- youth that have come of age during the highly defiance politics that has characterized the political trajectory of this country for the past 20 years. The national implications of this militarized brutality against the civilian population for simply having divergent views has been the digression of Uganda\u2019s efforts at transformation of its militarized past and the yet to be completed transition from a pseudo-military rule to civilian rule..<\/p>\n<p>So where do we go from here? First, there is need for a comprehensive investigation into the human rights violations that happened in the electoral period with a view of ascertaining the perpetrators for accountability and justice to the victims.<\/p>\n<p>Second, there is need for a deliberate national discourse aimed at demilitarising the State. Additionally, measures must be undertaken to reform the military justice system, from being abused as a platform to settle political contests.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, the military must disengage from partisan politics as this works to undermine its professionalisation efforts. The cost of not taking action on the above aspects will definitely impact negatively on Uganda\u2019s development.<\/p>\n<p><b>Mr James Nkuubi is from the Human Rights and Peace Centre (HURIPEC).<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>editorial@ug.nationmedia.com<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; Uganda. Every election brings to the fore lessons, exposes deep rooted social and political problems that demand solutions. Uganda\u2019s 2021 general elections brought to the fore six fundamental aspects all central to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 16-of promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, and also building effective, inclusive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":9151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,8],"tags":[233,240,234],"class_list":["post-9152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-files","category-homepage-english","tag-africa-press","tag-africa-press-uganda","tag-uganda"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>An audit of 2021 General Election - Uganda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every election brings to the fore lessons, exposes deep rooted social and political problems that demand solutions. 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