The ongoing Presidential Election petition No. 1 of 2021 filed by Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu of the National Unity Platform is a master stroke by the NUP party against the ruling regime.
The ruling regime made a mistake of viewing the move by Kyagulanyi as an ordinary move just like the ones of Kizza Besigye and Amama Mbabazi before them. They forgot that Kyagulanyi once sang a song titled: kiwani – meaning most of the time, what you see is not what you get! Bottomline: Kyagulanyi is a streetwise guy and to counter him, you need streetwise strategists!
Nobody in their right senses can expect Kyagulanyi to be foolish nor naive to expect that a Museveni court run by spineless men and women will overturn the result of a charade of an election which was conducted true to the spirit and letter of the Museveni dictatorship handbook. Kyagulanyi is using the petition for political expediency.
Kyagulanyi and the NUP party are using the petition exercise to expose the stench in the judicial system. They will keep filing stuff late and asking to amend this or the other. The politically clueless bench of Owiny Dollo will keep catching their bait and help Kyagulanyi to drive the narrative that he wants to drive and warp up emotions within the population – waiting for an explosion.
If I were Owiny Dollo and I know that the court has a predetermined outcome, I would actually come hard on the respondents and allow all the games of the petitioner’s team after all the petition has a time-barred lifetime. All that the court needed now was to show the public that they are doing everything possible to extend justice to the underprivileged and oppressed party, but even with all that, the petitioner failed to make their case. That is called managing expectation!
By coming off as tough and tolerating none of the ‘intended’ nonsense of the petitioner, the court is losing the PR bit of the case and may just end up with egg on the face. What will Owiny-Dollo and his colleagues do if one day Kyagulanyi wakes up, makes a live address and says he is withdrawing the petition and taking the case to the public court?
Will that not leave the judiciary as a bystander and passive stakeholder in the political transition process that the country is entering? What other chance will the judiciary have in shaping the political direction of the country in the immediate post-Museveni era?
I think Owiny-Dollo and his team need the support of political strategists.
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