The republic of uganda in the supreme court of uganda at kampala

THE ROLE OF UGANDA PEOPLES DEFENCE FORCES (UPDF) AND THE PRESIDENTIAL PROTECTION UNIT (PPU)

The Respondents have spoken in support of the participation in the electoral process by the army and indeed the Presidential Protection Unit. This is based on the argument that the UPDF is supposed to co-operation with civilians especially in emergencies. Two reasons were advanced. First that the UPDF has, at various points in time in the past, been deployed during various national activities: such as the currency conversion exercise in 1987, the expansion of the National Resistance Council in 1989, the Resistance Councils elections in 1992, the Constituency Assembly elections in 1994 and the Presidential and Parliamentary elections of 1996. I consider this argument totally lacking in merit, in reason and in logic. It is not the role of the army to supervise civilian elections of any sort. My view is that those who advance such a reason do not want to entrust the management of civil or civilian affairs into the hands of apt civil institutions like the civil police who are trained specially for civilian work and are expected to deal with civilians appropriately. It is because of this that I find incredible the claim by the Commander of the Army and the Inspector General of Police that because the Polling Stations were more than the number of policemen and policewomen, therefore, the UPDF had to be deployed to assist the police, It is well known that the police force has existed in Uganda since before Independence. Various successive Governments have had the duty to improve and recruit so as to expand the police force. Ever since 1987 there have been elections of one sort or another. Since that time, the strength and inadequacies of the police force must have been known, or ought to have been known, by those in Government and in charge of electoral process. It was the duty of the Commission and the various organs of Government to plan for holding civil election with the help of civil police. Indeed why not train and involve prisons personnel for just one or two days. Why not involve Local Government askaris?

Since the promulgation of the 1995 Constitution in which the democratic principles are set out and elections for the President are known, periods when elections for the President would be held were predictable as were the possible number of Polling Stations as well as the strength of the police force. Therefore I can only say that perhaps by policy, the police was incapacitated. Nobody has explained why the police force has fewer policemen or why no emergency measures were taken to train, say Local Government askaris, to complement the civil police. I cannot therefore accept the argument that the UPDF and PPU were deployed because of deficiencies in the strength of the police force. That is an argument without any merit. I think that deployment of UPDF was deliberate, intended to interfere with electioneering activities of the Petitioner and his supporters as the evidence abundantly shows.