INSIDE STORY: How Gen Museveni ordered army to contravene constitution In the wake of the overthrow of Burkina Faso’s president Blaise Compaore for attempting to change the constitution so he could end term limits in the country, we publish today revelations against Uganda’s longest serving head of state that are far more serious and damaging than what Compaore was attempting to do. A highly decorated Ugandan army officer has revealed how senior officers of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) were rounded up in 2005 and ordered by Gen Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda and UPDF commander-in-chief and ordered that they would have no view on the removal of term limits that had been the cornerstone of the then new Uganda constitution of 1995. He also reveals that President Museveni neither has any intention of stepping down from power nor ever had such intentions from the very beginning of his capture of power in 1986. Furthermore, it is revealed that the country is now governed more or less on ‘personal rule based on patronage, corruption and open subversion of the constitution’. These revelations are contained in an article written by Gen David Sejusa, the former coordinator of military intelligence, Member of the Uganda Parliament and senior presidential adviser when introducing a new website of his Free Uganda organisation. The article, a copy of which was emailed to The London Evening Post early Monday morning by the organisation’s Press Secretary Dr Vincent Magombe, says army officers who were members of parliament, had been attending the Command and Staff College at Kimaka when an order from Gen Museveni was received for everyone to proceed to Kampala and support the removal of term limits. “…the commandant at the time got an order at 6pm that day that we had to attend the next day without fail,” Gen Sejusa writes. “…we were not expected to have individual views on such an important issue. But this was primarily a political issue. How could we not have views?” he asks. As they were still mulling over the order, Gen Elly Tumwine, a former army commander and one of the original men who allegedly went to the bush with Museveni to launch a guerrilla war in the early 1980s, called the group around 10pm and told them he had also received the order. “As they say, the rest is history. Those are the circumstances under which Term Limits were removed,” he writes. The general who has been exiled in London since the beginning of last year, says his resistance against Museveni did not start after he was forced to become exiled in London as some would like to believe. He says: “…in 1996 I tried but failed to convince Mr Museveni not to contest in that election, but instead to allow a civilian to stand and we hand power to the people to avoid future problems.” He said that at an earlier meeting of the army High Command, Museveni had told them that they should ‘never allow anyone to come and spoil our country’. “I asked him ‘then why waste time and subject the country to an election that we knew we had to win?’ I felt that the ideals for which I had fought and was shot twice during the war were being betrayed.” Gen Sejusa revealed that in 1996 at a meeting at State House, Nakasero, he had pleaded with Museveni to step down and hand power back to the people ‘to avoid future problems’. He said that he had personally picked the former leader of the Democratic Party and at that time deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr Kawanga Ssemogerere to resign from office and stand against Museveni. What many may not know is that Dr Kawanga Ssemogerere was not ready yet because he had been threatened,” he says. Together with the late Abu Mayanja, then a veteran Ugandan politician, both drove to pick up Dr Ssemogerere from his home and took him to the place where he announced his candidacy against Museveni. For the first time since he left Uganda, Gen Sejusa touches on the war on northern Uganda during the mid-1990s in which hundreds of thousands of people especially from the Acholi and Langi tribes, were massacred by government forces and insurgents of the Lords Resistance Movement of Joseph Kony. Accused by many to have been the overall UPDF commander in the area during the insurgency, Gen Sejusa said he almost ‘paid the ultimate price when I exposed the northern Uganda war’ and warning against the creation of the Internally Displaced Peoples camps (IDPs) which claimed the lives of an unknown number of innocent men, women and children. A law graduate from Makerere University, Sejusa said: “I found it impossible to support a policy that I knew would lead to [the] death of thousands.” Accusing Gen Museveni of having introduced the IDPs, Gen Sejusa said his then commander-in-chief had ‘refused to heed our advice against a rushed Reduction in Force (RIF)’. I had advocated for a phased approach to keep us with enough troops to cover the ground as we saved incrementally to modernise the army. Museveni rejected this.” He said his stance about what was going on in the country led Museveni to summon him ‘in the presence of Salim Saleh’ to explain why he was opposed to the regime. “I told them that I wanted to save Uganda, because beyond this, we shall have another Luweero.” Gen Sejusa’s revelations paint an inner power struggle that many of us have been hearing about only through rumours often from those in positions of power in the country. As has happened before, events leading to his failure to return to Uganda have been carefully wrapped up in cotton wool by the regime, making it appear to those with no knowledge of the danger those opposed to Museveni face when they return home, that nothing at all would happen to him were he to catch a flight to Uganda tomorrow. The next paragraph explains clearly why he fears for his life to this day were he to return to Uganda. On learning that he had arrived in London, Gen Sejusa says: “…the terror regime ran amok and ransacked my offices arresting innocent officers and civilians working under me on the 5/5/2013, (many of these are still languishing in prison on tramped up charges). I went ahead and confirmed my flight home from the UK on BA on the 8/5/13 for my journey home on the 9th. That night of 8th, the Museveni regime carried out a military deployment intending to arrest and harm me.” Calling the military deployment at Entebbe International Airport on the night he was supposed to return home ‘not only cowardly but utterly scandalous’, Gen Sejusa reveals what happened at Entebbe on the day: “. A total of 13 tanks and 19 armoured personnel carriers of UPDF were deployed (directly or in reserve role) 6 police APCs, with 3 fire brigade utility vehicles and thousands of police in riot gear lined the 36 kilometres road from Kampala to Entebbe. A helicopter gunship was at the runway. The other two were at Entebbe state house lawn on standby. The airport was surrounded, roads closed and road blocks mounted in 12 places along that Entebbe highway.” He added that the deployment at Entebbe was not only criminal in both intent and action, the guns deployed against him were more than those deployed during the capture of Kampala by the National Resistance Army he was part of in January 1986 and more than those deployed to oust Gen Idi Amin by the Tanzanian Peoples Defence Forces in 1979. “Such was the level of panic and reckless mode of the near-failed state that it was only reasonable for me to delay my return home. We will continue with Gen Sejusa’s revelations in our Wednesday issue in which he warns the new Ugandan Prime Minister, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda to be wary of ‘the ‘hyenas’ lurking around the corridors of power to ensnare him and what his organisation is doing to bring to an end Yoweri Museveni’s regime. Don’t miss it. thelondoneveningpost/inside-story-how-gen-museveni-ordered-army-to-contravene-constitution/
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 22:41:03 +0000
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