In a powerful address to the Uganda Law Society (ULS) on Tuesday morning, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, also known as Bobi Wine, the president of the National Unity Platform (NUP), issued a clarion call to the nation’s legal fraternity: to reorient the justice system to serve the populace rather than entrenching existing power structures.
Kyagulanyi’s keynote speech was an unequivocal demand for lawyers to reclaim their foundational role in building a just society. He stressed that their specialized training and profound knowledge place them at the very heart of this objective, warning that “their inaction amidst oppression makes them complicit.” Underscoring the perilous nature of a compromised legal system, he invoked the chilling example of former Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka, stating, “No one is ever safe in a lawless nation and we have the example of none other than former Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka to demonstrate that.”
The NUP leader used the platform to deliver a scathing critique of Uganda’s judicial system, accusing it of actively contributing to the country’s alarming prison congestion. He highlighted a pervasive pattern where suspects’ rights are systematically abused, and they are then remanded without proper trial, effectively turning the courts into instruments of detention rather than justice.
Kyagulanyi boldly denounced what he termed “judicial cowardice masked as ‘legal doctrine’,” behind which judicial officers have, since independence, repeatedly “hidden to sanitize and legitimize military dictatorship, fraudulent elections and human rights abuses.” This, he argued, has eroded public trust and perpetuated cycles of impunity.
A significant portion of his criticism was directed at specific legal doctrines that he believes have been weaponized to subvert democracy. He specifically critiqued the ‘Political Question Doctrine’ and the ‘Substantiality Test,’ which he noted the Supreme Court has on numerous occasions relied upon to dismiss what he described as “mind-bending evidence of vote rigging and electoral violence against dictator Museveni.”
Kyagulanyi dissected the absurdity of the ‘Substantiality Test,’ explaining its detrimental impact on electoral justice: “Even when the judges know that any single act of rigging, however big or small, was done precisely to alter the final result; even when they know that no one rigs an election for the sake of rigging it but to win it; and even when they know that State-led electoral malpractice undermines the credibility of the entire process and result, they still go ahead to say it was not ‘substantial’.”
He concluded with a poignant observation about the underlying motivation for such rulings: “In other words, they would rather feel ‘safe’ than uphold their judicial oath.”Bobi Wine’s address served as a powerful reminder of the immense responsibility vested in the legal profession. His appeal to the Uganda Law Society is a direct challenge to its members to choose courage over comfort, and to actively champion the rule of law as a shield for the people, not a sword for those in power. The future of Uganda’s democratic aspirations, he implied, hinges significantly on their response to this critical call.
