In an unusually bold move in its engagement with the citizens, State House Uganda instituted an opinion poll on whether the now widely debatable issue of trial of civilians in military courts.
While the Constitutional Court has ruled that no civilians should be tried in the General Court Martial or any military court (or tribunals), the President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni-led executive has succeeded in bringing the matter on the agenda of key issues the public should focus on.
Museveni has praised members of the general court martial, his appointees, and the military courts for dispensing justice quickly and for denying suspects bail.
The typical Museveni would most likely prefer martial law where he is the law and the law is himself. In the past, he has tried to push the courts to deny bail to suspects of capital offences.
A largely persecuted opposition feared that such a move would make it easy for the Museveni State to slap trumped up capital offences against his critics and keep them on remand without bail while claiming to be investigating.
Museveni wants the military courts to try civilians like his fiercest critic of two decades, Dr Kizza Besigye, a retired colonel and his bush war physician who has challenged him in four presidential elections.
And state institutions are taking the cues. Immediately he made his views on the matter known, State House Uganda, his official residence, instituted a poll to measure citizens’ views on one of the issues he hinted on: a referendum on trial of civilians in military courts.
In the opinion poll, State House Uganda asked, “Should we have a referendum in the issue of Court Martials.”
Within 24 hours, up to 7,210 people had cast their votes in the online poll.
The results were clear. The majority said they preferred a referendum on the issue of court martials, with 78.6 per cent voting Yes, according to the poll results seen by The Pearl Times.
The rest of the 7,210 voters said No to the idea of a referendum on the matter.
And just like that, the Museveni State may now rely on such data to spend billions to conduct a referendum on an issue just is settled but in which the powers that be are interested in altering for their personal political gain.
When the poll was first put up, a section of Ugandans simply told Museveni, who is aged 80 and in power for nearly a half of his life, to restore term and age limits and retire to his Rwakitura farm. (See Details Here and There).
Table banging Isaac Ssemakadde of the Uganda Law Society has also punched holes in Museveni’s views on trial of civilians in military courts, as reported Here.
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