Pakistani, Ugandan leaders both ruthless and autocratic
>> Thursday, November 22, 2007
| CanWest News Service |
Thursday, November 22, 2007
|
KAMPALA - Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, may be the pariah of the Commonwealth over his continued imposition of emergency rule.
But he shares one significant anti-democratic characteristic with the Ugandan leader, who is playing host to Queen Elizabeth, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and four dozen fellow Commonwealth leaders at a summit to open here today: A disregard of his country's courts and judges.
Like Musharraf, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni believes his country's judiciary should never challenge his ultimate authority. This raises a stark incongruity as Commonwealth leaders meet to extol the virtues of human rights, democracy and good governance: Museveni gets to bask in the spotlight as the host of this posh gathering, while Musharraf was a no-show.
Both leaders hold the office of president, but both revel in their military backgrounds.
Musharraf, as Pakistan's military chief, came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup. Museveni was a guerrilla commander, who led a bloody uprising that brought him to power in 1986.
Neither leader allows any meaningful political opposition to thrive in his country. Neither has any tolerance for an independent judiciary providing any sort of serious counterbalance to the president's executive authority.
Adam O'Brien, the Ugandan analyst for the International Crisis Group, says Commonwealth countries here - many of which supply the aid dollars that make up 40 per cent of Uganda's national budget - should be using the summit to spotlight human rights abuses by its host. Saying nothing, said O'Brien, amounts to "just giving money to the Ugandan government and seeing that money go to the military, and that military will be used to arrest journalists, hound courts."
The current crisis in Pakistan was precipitated when Musharraf disbanded his country's Supreme Court just as it was poised to rule that he could not run for re-election as president while still being a military leader. Musharraf jailed thousands political opponents, including judges and lawyers. He also created a new court stacked with sympathizers that, not surprisingly, has paved the way for his continued rule.
Musharraf's run-ins with the previous court date back to March, when he suspended its chief justice, setting off waves of protest across Pakistan. Coincidentally, that was when the latest round in Museveni's fight with his high court flared yet again here.
While Musharraf has been under pressure to take off his military uniform and stand down as the leader of his country's armed forces, Museveni wears his past history as a guerrilla commander and revolutionary as a badge of honour. He sees himself as inherently superior to any judge or court.
Museveni made that crystal clear in a letter to the head of a large Indian sugar company. What would happen, the Indian business executive had asked, if Uganda's courts struck down a controversial deal approved by Museveni to turn over a large swath of land to his company?
"As to the courts, the judges are not the ones who liberated Uganda. Their vision cannot be superior to the one of the freedom fighters," Museveni replied in the Oct. 30, 2006, letter, reprinted earlier this year by the Ugandan newspaper, The Daily Monitor.
Richard Dicker, director of international justice programs at Human Rights Watch in New York, said Museveni has a track record of displaying "authoritarian tendencies" towards his judiciary.
Dicker was in Kampala last March when Ugandan security forces stormed the high court after judges released on bail five men who had been in custody for 15 months on treason charges.
Days later, Ugandan judges went on strike to protest the intervention. When demonstrators turned out in support, they were beaten back by police firing tear gas.
The bail suspects were rearrested and brought before judges in another part of the country and arraigned on murder.
The same thing happened in November 2005 when Uganda's high court tried to release the same men in what has become known as the "Black Mamba" raid, named after the Ugandan anti-terrorism squad that stormed the courthouse.
The men were part of a movement led by Kizza Besigye, who happened to be the only candidate who opposed Museveni in the 2005 presidential election and who will meet the international press today to voice his concerns.
Human Rights Watch condemned the raid in 2005, saying that the "Museveni government's attempt to intimidate the courts shows its profound lack of respect for the law."
The organization pointed out something else that is relevant, now that Museveni is basking in the international spotlight: Uganda signed a declaration at the 1991 Commonwealth summit that renewed its commitment to "the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary."
Ottawa Citizen
© CanWest News Service 2007
http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=179e7f7e-3f80-4604-ba5d-dbe19ee0956c&k=22009
0 comments:
Post a Comment