Bureau Communications from Canada

1. TO ALL MEMBERS OF THE UGANDA PEOPLES CONGRESS, assembled in Convention in Toronto, Canada, I send you all my most heartfelt and warm greetings.
2. I praise you and honour you for your dedication to your Party, the Uganda Peoples Congress. Your dedication and your selfless work and campaigns, will one day again, enable the people of Uganda to enjoy and exercise their God given inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual.
   I am therefore very proud of you all.
3. Your Convention is being held in the Thirteenth year during which the people of Uganda have suffered and have experienced so much wars, deaths, genocide, massacres, devastations, despoliations, deprivations and suppressions of the God given inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual.
4. The objective situation in Uganda, characterized by the above Armageddon, sets unerringly, the agenda of your Convention and the nature of your work after the Convention.
5. The existence of the blood thirsty and massacring military cum one-Party dictatorship in Uganda prescribes, in my opinion, that the Convention concentrates on producing ideas on how best to remove the dictatorship and ideas on the structural organizations for the purpose. The UPC organizations should be free from the clutches of the NRA/NRM. Persons who formulate UPC policies should not also be persons who formulate NRA/NRM policies or members of the NRA/NRM organs.
6. Although you meet at a time when the flow of ideas is proscribed in Uganda and where your Party has been prohibited, for over twelve years, from participating in politics and in elections, you still can, in your deliberations, draw from the mission in the Constitution and nature of your Party and produce ideas for the removal of the dictatorship. There are also pitfalls, which you should avoid in your deliberations and Resolutions.
7. The nature and mission of your Party, the Uganda Peoples Congress, as enshrined in its Constitution promulgated by its supreme organ, the Annual Delegates Conference (ADC) is that the UPC must always and at all times be the Party of:
8. the Farmers;
9. the Workers;
10. the Youth;
11. Ideas and
12. Leadership.
8. In order to be and to be seen to be the Party of the Farmers, of the Workers, of the Youth, of Ideas and of Leadership, no member holds any official position in any organ of the Party unless such a member is either elected or is appointed under the provisions of the Constitution of the Party. Members of the UPC are enjoined, by the provisions in the Party's Constitutions and in the name of humanity, to struggle and to campaign for the restoration of conditions, which will enable the Party to work and serve Uganda, under law, without restraint.
9. From the Branch, through the Constituency, District to the national level, the UPC Constitution provides for the Chief Executive at each level to be elected and does not provide for any Chief Executive, at any level, to appoint his/her successor or replacement even temporarily. The Chief Executive, in the UPC is a servant of the member Farmers, Workers and Youth and must subscribe to the provisions of the Party Constitution and Ideas of the Party on all matters and be able to provide Leadership.
10. The force majeure imposed on the Party in March 1986 by the National Resistance Army (NRA) and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) which proscribed the management and activities of the UPC and was later, in 1995, codified in Article 269 of the Uganda Constitution, was clearly meant to remove the UPC from Uganda's body politic.
11. Members of the UPC must vow not to allow themselves or their Party to be removed from Uganda's body politic. Should any such abomination occur, the members shall be free to go underground and from there struggle to assert their humanity.
12. It is a very sad commentary that in March 1986 when the force majeure was imposed by the NRA/NRM dictatorship, the very top leaders of the Democratic Party (DP) in the person of their President, secretary-general and Treasurer were in the Cabinet of the NRA/NRM dictatorship. It is very sad because together, the UPC and the DP can remove the dictatorship.
13. It would be futile and unnecessary for this Convention or for members of the UPC or the people of Uganda as a whole to want to know the terms on which the top leaders of the DP became Cabinet ministers in the dictatorship and why they remained ministers after the force majeure which also affected their Party was imposed.
14. The pertinent consideration for the Convention to note is that much credence and credibility was given to the dictatorship when the leaders of the DP were Cabinet ministers. They were not alone; even some prelates toured Capitals in Western Europe and North America in praise of the dictatorship.
15. The credence and credibility so given left the UPC as the sole opposition Party and enabled the older democracies and the donor community to formulate and pursue a dual policy in the provision of their aid to African countries.
16. The UPC as the sole opposition Party has had and continues to have much battering by the dictatorship and the older democracies and much vilification from the dictatorship and the older democracies. Both want the UPC also to give credence to organs of dictatorship and credibility to the dictatorship. The course they have adopted is to suborn members of the UPC to cause disarray in the UPC and to be members of organs of dictatorship where as members, they are automatically conscripted to the membership of the Party of the NRA once known as the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and now as the Movement.
17. During the Cold War, the older democracies and the Soviet Union financed and facilitated dictatorships in Africa. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the older democracies have adopted a dual policy where in some countries, they are promoting, financing and facilitating the growth of democracies and in others, with Uganda as the fulcrum, they are promoting, financing and facilitating the growth and entrenchment of dictatorship.
18. This message comes to you from Lusaka, Zambia. In the late 1980s, the older democracies suspended their aid to Zambia which was one-Party ruled on the ground that it was bad public policy for democracies to finance and facilitate one-Party rule. Today, aid from the older democracies to the multiparty Zambia is tightly tied to observance and respect by the government of Zambia of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual citizens of Zambia.
19. In Uganda, however, aid from the older democracies is not even loosely tied to the observance and respect by the Uganda dictatorship of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual citizens of Uganda. Instead, all the schemes which have suppressed the enjoyment and exercise by citizens of Uganda of their inalienable human rights and freedoms have been financed and facilitated by the older democracies.
20. Uganda has become, because of the dual policy of the older democracies, since the invasion of Rwanda in October 1990, like an aircraft carrier from where sorties for the export of dictatorship, human carnage and suppressions of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual fly in every direction. Rwanda is already under the hegemony of the Uganda dictatorship and the nascent democracies in Zambia and Kenya are not safe.
21. As you meet in this Convention the older democracies are actively financing and facilitating the entrenchment of a series of definitive schemes of the Uganda dictatorship which suppress the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the people of Uganda.
22. Some of them may be given:-
1. There are five separate violations and suppressions of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual in Article 269 of the Uganda Constitution. Aid from the older democracies continue to flow in huge amounts annually to the dictatorship as if those heinous provisions do not exist in the Constitution and or are not being vigorously enforced by the army and armed police.
2. The one-Party model of elections and the electoral laws, which prohibit competitive elections and disenfranchise the entire electorate are praised, supported, financed and facilitated by the older democracies. The two violations and suppressions - prohibition of competition and disenfranchisement - of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the citizens are wholly acceptable to the older democracies but were in the late 1980s not acceptable in Zambia and Kenya.
3. The Movement Act of 1997 has two distinctive and heinous provisions, which grossly violate and suppress the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual. Under the Act, anyone elected to Parliament or lower Council is automatically, in contravention of the freedom of conscience, conscripted into the Movement, which is the Party of the dictatorship. Secondly, the Act provides for all institutions, organs of governance and official offices from the Presidency downwards to be not national but institutions, organs and offices of the Movement.
4. Preparations for two other very nefarious and immoral schemes of the Uganda dictatorship to suppress the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the people of Uganda and to make Uganda a fully-fledged dictatorship are being financed through budgetary support by the older democracies.
1. The first of the schemes is the nefarious and iniquitous ploy to register the political Parties when the real objective is not to register any and to render them illegal. The proposed law will require a political Party to show that it has active Branches in 2/3 of the Districts in order to be registered and even after being registered, a Party will not be permitted to participate in politics and in elections. It is most iniquitous and cruelly nefarious that after prohibiting the Parties under Article 269 of the Constitution and the earlier ban of March 1986 on their activities to manage and keep active their Branches, the Parties should be required to fail the test for registration because of the force majeure imposed by the dictatorship.
2. The second scheme is the immoral and woefully reprehensible provision in Article 271 of the Uganda Constitution to subject the nature and degree of how the individual should enjoy and exercise his/her inalienable human rights and freedoms not to be determined by the individual but by strangers in a referendum. Some of the older democracies are known to have pledged to finance and facilitate this abomination while others want to negotiate some temporary relaxation to the provisions of Article 269.
22. No older democracy has, since 1986 over twelve years now, condemned any of the definitive and heinous schemes of the Uganda dictatorship, which have suppressed the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the people of Uganda. They have, on the contrary, willingly and eagerly finanaced, facilitated and praised each and every scheme.
23. Because only the UPC has not formally given credence and credibility to the dictatorship and because fifth columnists who used to be in the UPC have broken out and became conscripted supporters of the dictatorship but also causing disarray in the UPC, the older democracies, like the dictatorship, appear to believe that the political Parties no longer exist in Uganda and that the credence and credibility given to the dictatorship by the DP, the Conservative Party, some of the prelates and the UPC apostates is proof that the people of Uganda want dictatorship and do not want multiparty politics and multiparty elections.
24. It may or may not be the belief of the older democracies that the people of Uganda want dictatorship and not multiparty politics. If the belief is that the people want dictatorship, it cannot tell the whole story and it is contrived and is a stratagem to punish the people of Uganda for supporting a nationalist Party whose government and leaders are incorruptible, cannot be bribed and totally averse to being the NYAMPALA (hired sadistic headman) of the older democracies in Uganda. Clear evidence exist.
25. Before and after Independence, the older democracy propagated and sought to undermine your Party with the propaganda that it was a Communist Party. The result was split after split which no Party in Uganda could have experienced and still remained strong. Your Party endured the splits and remained strong because it is the nationalist Party of the people of Uganda.
26. In 1965, one of the older democracies paid one million dollars which was a lot of money at the time to a person to use for the overthrow of the UPC government and then to make the UPC to be a NYAMPALA. The strength and character of your Party defeated the conspiracy.
27. The Amin dictatorship, which banned all the political Parties and was a reign of murders and terror was welcomed and praised by the older democracies just as much as the Museveni dictatorship was to be praised by them. It was Amin's vulgarity, which made the older democracy to abandon him in 1979 when he was fighting the Tanzanian army.
28. At the fall of the Amin dictatorship, the older democracies imposed it that Uganda be ruled by fractious individuals who were unknown in the politics of Uganda before Amin and that the UPC and its leader were to have no voice in the politics and governance of Uganda. Those terms have been disclosed by Lord David Owen who, at the time, was the British Foreign Secretary in his book:
    Time to Declare published in 1991 by Michael Joseph.
29. Now and since 1986 under another dictatorship, the older democracies are again punishing the people of Uganda and this time, they even want to show that the people of Uganda have no inalienable human rights and freedoms. Otherwise they would not be willing and eager to finance and facilitate an abomination where the people would be asked, in a referendum, if they believe they have inalienable human rights and freedoms and if they have, whether they want to enjoy and exercise them.
30. The Uganda dictatorship and the older democracies have reduced the people of Uganda to the level of slaves or sub-humans simply because some politicians and prelates have given and are giving credence and credibility to the dictatorship.
31. It is of no concern to the older democracies that no political Party has held a Conference and no synod has met and decided to give credence and credibility to the dictatorship. They also know that the dictatorship has never held a free and fair multiparty elections at which an overwhelming majority voted for the dictatorship which, even so could not and cannot suppress the Inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual.
32. The credence and credibility given and being given by some politicians and some prelates is, in fact, a screen to conceal the military dictatorship and the force majeure imposed on the people of Uganda in March 1986 which, over the years, has been entrenched with finances and technical assistance provided by the older democracies.
33. Under the military rule and the force majeure wars, genocide, massacres, devastations, despoliations and deprivations of a nature never known before in Uganda have engulfed the homes of more than six million people - half of whom are now dead - and vast areas have been made desolate.
34. At the time when the force majeure was imposed in March 1986, the dictatorship was prosecuting a scorched-earth persecution and massacres of members and leaders of the UPC in Buganda and Eastern Region; the same treatment which the NRA had meted to members and leaders of the UPC in the Western Region which the Okello Junta had ceded to the NRA/NRM. To cover the massacres of members and leaders of the UPC in Buganda and in the Eastern region, the dictatorship concocted what they call Force Obote Back Again (FOBA) and in the West, Bring Obote Back (BOB) both of which did not exist.
35. As the NRA moved and occupied the entire Eastern and Northern Regions, the FOBA and BOB scheme was dropped and replaced by a program of indiscriminate pogrom, devastations and despoliations. The people reacted, under poor leadership, to defend lives and property. Quality leadership associated with the reaction was and is still out of the country. The wars, which are still going on, are the direct outcome of the system of governance established by the dictatorship and the brutalities of the NRA. They cannot end unless multiparty system is restored. The defeat or surrender of one rebel army causes as happened since 1987 the emergence of another rebel army.
36. The cruelest irony in the Uganda tragedy is that it has been the political Parties, which, by refusing to support wars, made it difficult for rebel armies to find willing recruits and denied rebel armies popular support. If the Parties are removed from Uganda's body politic either by the registration ploy or the referendum, millions of their members will either join the existing rebel armies or raise new ones.
37. When the NRA/NRM launched a war in February, 1981 against the people of Uganda, the UPC government adopted and vigorously implemented the policy which went under the generic name of: "Development In A Secure Environment." The UPC government never banned the activities of the political Parties - not even the activities of Museveni's Party, the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM). The UPC government also never enacted any law, which suppressed the enjoyment and exercise by the citizen of his/her inalienable human rights an freedoms. It was that policy which contained the insurgency in one District, Luwero and its environs with a population of some 600,000 people and defeated the insurgency there in 1984.
38. Since 1986 under the Museveni dictatorship, wars have not only continued for over twelve years but also engulfed over six million people. The root of this holocaust can only be the system of governance and the brutalities of the NRA.
39. The army of the Uganda dictatorship has committed and continues to commit genocide, massacres, devastations and despoliations which the older democracies ignored and condoned or ascribed to rebel armies, even where overwhelming evidence exonerated the rebel armies. Some facts are indisputable and I cite only a few.
1. Museveni's army has, since 1981, fought wars against disperate adversaries in all the four Regions of Uganda and in Rwanda and Zaire/Congo. The nature of the atrocities in each theatre, particularly genocide and massacres, has been the same.
   The one army, which has been a constant factor over such a wide area and against so many different adversaries, logically stands out as the number one culprit and perpetrator of genocide and massacres.
2. In early January 1987, Museveni's ministry of defence issued a bulletin, which stated that it was "Government policy for the army to destroy whatever food or whatever would give succour to rebels." Since there is no special kind of food anywhere in Uganda or elsewhere in the world which can give succor only to rebels and not to the people as a whole and although the Geneva Convention forbids the starvation of the civil population as a weapon of war, not a single older democracy condemned and/or censured the Uganda dictatorship and none of them can say that the bulletin was issued by rebels.
3. In the third week of January 1987, Museveni and his field Commander, Fred Rwigyema, both disclosed that the NRA had committed "massacres of some 600" people at Corner Kilak in Kitgum District. Museveni's actual words were - "We massacred those chaps very badly." Although the heinous deed was described and acknowledged by Museveni as massacres committed by his army and not rebels, none of the older democracies condemned it.
4. In a press interview published by the New Vision, his propaganda mouthpiece, on June 27, 1989, Museveni disclosed that "there was a policy of destroying foodstuff being used by the rebels" and that after his army had executed the policy, "there isn't any food anymore to destroy." Considering that the military operations to destroy food covered vast areas then inhabited by some five million people, half of whom were uprooted (in rags) from their homes and the remainder have never been seen again, the policy of the older democracies which described this holocaust as "much improvement in human rights observance", presents a picture which cannot possibly be true that they are in collaboration with the dictatorship to slaughter the people of Uganda.
40. While the slaughter of the people of Uganda raged, beginning with the FOBA and BOB massacres, the UPC Vice-President, the then de facto leader of the Party, decided to pursue a policy of low profile as a means to avert the probable elimination of UPC members from the population of Uganda. The policy continued and was reversed under the Presidential Policy Commission (PPC)instituted in early 1991.
41. As for FOBA and BOB, although they did not exist and are no longer spoken about, the Convention may well take account of the fact that for over twelve years, the leaders of the dictatorship and their sycophants and conscripts speak and behave as if Milton Obote is in Uganda and is undermining them. They are so scared of the name that for the past twelve years, they have, twice a year, published stories of Milton Obote being very sick.
42. There is no one on earth who is immune to sickness. But to wish a healthy man who is not even on the scene illness as a political ploy to demoralize his supporters, is to expose a reality which this Convention should seize and develop. The reality is that the campaign to demoralize members of the UPC calibrated on false stories that the UPC President is very sick as was propagated at the beginning of this month, means that the dictatorship, the detractors of the UPC and all others have found the UPC a very hard nut to crack.
43. The scheme to cripple the UPC by getting someone unknown to the Annual Delegates Conference to be its leader is a very old one. It was at the root of the 1966 Crisis. Just before and after the fall of Amin, the talk of the detractors was that the UPC was a very popular and a very good Party and would even be a much, much better Party if it got rid of its leader who was allegedly, a very bad man and who, because he was very much hated, made the people also to hate the Party. The response of the UPC members was that no one who was very bad and greatly hated could have presided over the building of a very popular and a very good Party.
44. After the Moshi Conference of March 1979 and after the fall of Amin, the propaganda of the then rulers of Uganda was that the UPC and its leaders were very unpopular and very much hated by the people. The NRA/NRM dictatorship has been saying the same. Some members of the Party who have been suborned or conscripted by the dictatorship and others who are fifth columnists have joined the chorus and want to remove the Party President outside the authority of the Annual Delegates Conference and to take advantage of the force majeure in Article 269 of the NRA Constitution to write a new UPC Constitution in order to comply with the desires of the dictatorship.
45. The response which members of the UPC issued in 1979 regarding the propaganda by detractors that the Party and its leader were very unpopular and very much hated by the people has remained valid and still remains valid today. It must be issued again and again by members of the UPC where-ever they live. The response was and is: Let there be free and fair multiparty elections;
46. the UPC does not fear to be humiliated by the votes of the people if that be their wish. Second, provide for conditions for the Annual Delegates Conference to meet and elect the leader and do not dupe the UPC with a Quisling who is eating from the same bowl with the dictatorship.
47. Part of the tragedy of Uganda is that the detractors of the UPC, much as they speak loudly about democracy, they are also very scared and dread to face the UPC in free and fair multiparty elections.

48. In the history of Uganda, it is only the UPC, which is known to have accepted the outcome of a parliamentary elections in 1961. No other Party, except the UPC, has accepted and respected the verdict of the electorate in subsequent elections because they lost. The UPC also lost in 1961 and had reasons to denounce the outcome on the ground that the elections in Buganda were a charade.
49. The Central reason why the UPC did not denounce the outcome of the 1961 elections in Buganda where a total of only 13,279 persons voted and elected 21 members to Parliament, was the Party's belief in the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the individual. In that election the UPC President was returned unopposed and the Vice-President was elected by 21,295 votes. To vote or to boycott an election is the right of the individual. In 1961, the UPC respected equally the rights of the 13,297 people who voted and the rights of some 700,000 people who boycotted the elections in Buganda.
50. Today in Uganda, since the introduction of the personal merit model of elections in 1989, the right of every adult voter to choose a representative upon a set of policy presented to and considered by him/her, has been removed from Uganda's body politic. Elections in Uganda are therefore a chicanery, which is designed to confirm the continuance of the NRA/NRM dictatorship.
51. The very people who loudly claim that the UPC rigged the 1962 and 1980 elections, are so scared of conducting or demanding for free and fair elections and face the UPC that they have supported and support a model of elections which suppresses competition of ideas and prohibits the electorate, throughout Uganda, to receive, consider and vote for a particular set of policy for the governance of Uganda.
52. The same is true in the case of District or lower Council elections. The candidates stand as individuals upon personal merit and not upon policies articulated by organizations for the administration of the Disttrict or lower Council which policies, the electorate should receive and consider before voting or in order to make an informed choice.
53. The model of elections imposed by the NRA/NRM dictatorship disenfranchises all the voters in the South, East. West and North (SEWN) by prohibiting the presentation to them to consider alternative policies for the governance of Uganda as a whole so that they vote for policies nearest to their considered individual positions for the majority's choice to govern the country. The voice of the majority in a Constituency is not the voice of the majority throughout the country.
54. Equally, motley candidates elected upon personal merit and on Constituency platforms cannot claim to have been elected on platforms or policies received and considered by the voters throughout the country. By prohibiting groups of candidates under different organizations to present different and/or alternative policies for the governnce of Uganda to the electorate throughout the country, the NRA/NRM model of elections effectively prohibits the electorate from having any voice in the policies for the governance of the country.
55. A very serious question therefore arises. In a country where the political Parties are prohibited from convening public meetings to debate public affairs and prohibited to contest elections and present their policies and candidates to the electorate and where only one Party, the Movement is the sole voice in politics and the electorate vote on constituency policies presented by candidates, when do the people, the owners of the country, with their differing ideas on public affairs get control of policies for the governance of the country?
56. The supporters of Uganda one-party cum military dictatorship will probably say that the question is silly and proceed to assert that in 1996 Museveni, Ssemogerere and Kibirige-Mayanja each published manifestoes containing policies for the governance of Uganda. Any such response would, in fact, be not only doubly silly but also acknowledgement of the existence of dictatorship in Uganda. Four facts stand out.
1. In a period of ten years from 1986 to 1996 under the Movement system of governance, Uganda was ruled under policies which no one and no organization presented to the electorate and which they did not endorse either in a multiparty competitive elections or with yes or no votes.
2. In the 1996 farcical and fraudulent presidential election, Museveni had the organizational and resources of the NRM to support his campaign whereas Ssemogerere and Kibirige-Mayanja were prohibited from seeking and receiving the campaign capability and resources of any organization and did not have any. The electorate cannot be said to have received and considered, on equal basis or at par, the policies of the three men when two of them campaigned under the yoke of impediments and restrictions and the third did so in freedom.
3. Even if Sseomogerere and Kibirige-Mayanja had received the campaign capacities and resources of organizations, which was not the case, the policies enunciated in their respective "personal merit" manifestoes would still have not been policies for the governance of Uganda for the electorate to seriously consider, precisely because no individual can rule a country, unless he/she be a dictator with a private army, without the support of a political organization. Ssemogerere and Kibirige-Mayanja had no political organizations, which supported their policies and were therefore, to the electorate, jokes who could not govern because they had no organizations with men and women to form a government.
4. The last point above namely, men and women in an organization was brought out most starkly in a TV and radio broadcast by Museveni on 6 May - 4 days before the elections. On possibility of losing the election, he said: "I will not handover my army to anyone." The electorate knew that the entire farce was designed for the continuance of the military rule and not for them to vote for policies for the governance of Uganda.
57. There are several matters about the NRM as it was and the Movement as it is now, which make presentation of public policy for debate or as election issues for the electorate to consider and vote for or against inimical to itself and to its objective.
1. irst the NRM was and now Movement is the political wing (Party) of the NRA. Before the NRA/NRM siezed power in January 1986, their policies were not designed to be debated at public meetings or to be endorsed or rejected at public elections. Their policies were designed to subvert public order and peace and were therefore formulated by a few of their leaders in order to avoid leakage to the adversary. The NRM never changed, after January 1986 the manner of formulating its policies and existed, until its nomenclature was changed in 1997, without holding even once a Conference to debate its policies for the governance of Uganda or a Conference to elect its leaders.
2. Although the NRM was the political wing (Party) of the NRA, its Chairman, Museveni, continuously sought to deny the fact while also, simultaneously, upholding it. The result, which the Movement has inherited, was that the NRM was both a political party and a system of governance at the same time and in one body. The policies, which the NRM could formulate, were threfore for the subversion of the Uganda Society and to conceal military rule which went by the name of NRM government at times and at other times as Movement system of governance. This is the reason why the Movement Act purports to make a system, the first time ever in the world, to have an organizational structure where the structure, a Party is the system.
3. When Museveni and Tito Okello in Nairobi on 17 December 1985 signed an Accord, he gave his titles. They were: "Chairman, High Command National Resistance Army and Interim Chairman National Resistance Movement." When the NRA overthrew the Okello Junta, it issued a Proclamation on 26 January 1986, which was signed by Museveni with the title of: Chairman National Resistance Movement. No documents, legal or otherwise are signed by a system; only by representatives of organizations or by individuals. The NRM was and so is the Movement, a political (Party) organization. The UPC does not and shall never accept the chicanery which conceals dictatorship as some other form of governance.
58. What was concealed and is still being concealed in the propaganda that there is some form of a system of governance and not dictatorship in Uganda, is actually stated in black and white as dictatorship in the NRA Proclamation of 26 January 1986. It was proclaimed, on that day, that the NRA "took over the powers of the government of the Republic of Uganda..."
59. The said powers have not, for over twelve years now, been returned to the people for them to enjoy and exercise through their representatives elected in free and fair elections and in accordance with the provisions of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
60. Since that Proclamation, the enjoyment and exercise by the citizen of his/her inalienable human rights and freedoms to participate in politics and elections from outside the aegis of the NRM or Movement, have been suppressed. That is dictatorship.
61. The Uganda peoples Congress has been struggling and Campaigning; is struggling and campaigning and shall continue to struggle and campaign for the return of the inalienable human rights and freedoms which the NRA took from every citizen of Uganda old, young and even not yet born.
62. The struggles and campaigns of the UPC are directed primarily against the NRA/NRM dictatorship; but the dictatorship has very powerful allies namely, the older democracies. The struggles and campaigns of the UPC must therefore also go to the rulers, legislatures, Churches, Universities, Corporations Civic organizations, human rights organizations, the media and to the people in the older democracies.
63. The Uganda peoples Congress is not asking and shall never ask the older democracies to overthrow the Uganda dictatorship. Far from it. That is the task for the people of Uganda.
64. The Uganda Peoples Congress is asking and shall continue to implore the older democracies, in the name of humanity, to do what they have done before to the Uganda dictatorship and to the one-Party Zambia and Kenya - suspend your aid. Do not continue to enslave the people of Uganda by praising, financing and facilitating schemes and a system of governance which have suppressed and are suppressing the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the people of Uganda as well as slaughtering them.
65. In Zambia and Kenya where there were no wars, genocide, massacres, devastations, despoliations and deprivations, but ruled by single Parties, the older democracies suspended their aid. The immediate result was amendments to the Constitution of the two countries and multiparty elections in October 1990 and December 1992 respectively.
66. The older democracies suspended their aid to Uganda for nearly three years - 1986, 1987 and 1988 - when the Uganda dictatorship failed to produce an economic policy and programs, which could be supported by aid from the older democracies. It was towards the end of 1988 after the Uganda dictatorship had plagiarized and adopted in their entirety the economic policy and programs of the UPC government that aid was restored but was not tied to respect by the dictatorship of the inalienable human rights and freedoms of the citizen.
67. Today, the older democracies are full of praises that the Uganda dictatorship has the best economic policy and programs in Africa. What is being praised is the brainchild of your Party, the Uganda Peoples Congress, and the person who is being praised is a plagiarist.
68. In May 1982, the UPC government elected in the multiparty elections held in December 1980, published its economic policy, programs and project profiles. The success of the vigorous implementation led to a revision and expansion, which was published in October 1983 under the title of: Revised Recovery Program.
69. Faced with a raging recession for two years and with the suspension of foreign aid, Museveni was forced to adopt in entirety the UPC policy, programs and project profiles which he had previously strongly denounced and condemned. What was plagiarized was published in June 1988 under the title: Rehabilitation AND Development Plan.
70. The programs and the priority projects in the earlier document of 1983 appear, in the same serial order, in the latter document of 1988. The difference has been in implementation.
71. Whereas the UPC government (1980 - 1985) gave equal emphasis to every sector, the Museveni dictatorship has cut-off poverty eradication and social services - health and education - from the programs. The result is that, under the dictatorship, the people of Uganda have suffered and are suffering from a very severe and debilitating impoverishment of a nature and degree they have never before known.
72. Treatment of ill health and disease and education opportunities have been priced out of the reach of the people and their children by the dictatorship.
73. In now twelve and a half years, despite the increase in population, the dictatorship has not built a single hospital or a secondary school. In the 1960s when the population was under ten million, the UPC government built, equipped and staffed in five years, twenty hospitals and a large number of Clinics known in Uganda as Dispensaries. Also during the same five years period, the UPC government expanded all the Secondary Schools, which existed at Independence and built, equipped and staffed new ones. The UPC government built and equipped new laboratories and libraries in all Senior Secondary Schools.
74. In four and a half years, in early 1980s, the UPC government rehabilitated all the hospitals, Senior Secondary Schools, Secondary Schools, tertiary Colleges and subsidized the efforts of the people which established new Secondary Schools which the dictatorship has since closed.
75. All hospitals, Senior and Secondary Schools are now in a dilapidated state, under-staffed and some were destroyed by the NRA during the operations to destroy food. The medical staff and teachers are poorly and rarely paid. The hospitals have no drugs and the school libraries no books and the laboratories have no equipment and apparatuses.
76. To destroy quality education but to cynically present it as a great service to Uganda, the dictatorship has now come up with a scheme which herds 200-300 primary school pupils in a class or under a tree. The teacher in charge of the class is poorly and rarely paid and therefore a debilitated wreck. Scholastic materials are not provided and huge funds for the scheme are openly embezzled.
77. Corruption was pronounced by Museveni at a Press Conference in 1989 as public policy and tenet of governance. He pronounced that for him to stamp out corrutpion, "would cause problems" and that there were, to quote his actual words again, "important things to do other than battle with corruption."
78. In the older democracies, corruption and embezzlement are crimes. In Uganda, the older democracies have been and are financing and facilitating corruption and embezzlement. By supporting the dictatorship, the older democracies have also accepted that corruption, embezzlement and the deployment and usage of their aid must not be debated or made election issues by opponents of the dictatorship.
79. Multiparty politics and multiparty elections which provide the most effective and ubiquitous police against corruption and embezzlement of public funds and against violations of the citizen's Human Rights and Freedoms, have been removed from Uganda's Body politic with the approval of the older democracies as evidenced by their praises of the dictatorship. On this matter and on Wars, genocide, massacres and the suppressions of the inalienable Human rights and freedoms of the citizen as a system of Governance, the Uganda Peoples Congress will struggle and Campaign everywhere until multiparty politics and multiparty elections are restored.
80. The capacity of your Party to participate in public affairs has been and is shackled by the provisions of Article 269 of the NRA/NRM Constitution of Uganda. To circumvent the shackles, the Presidential Policy Commission (PPC) and the Party Representative Council (PRC) were instituted respectively in early 1991 and November 1997.
81. The PPC and the PRC are improvisation organs established under Article 4(10) of the Constitution of the Party which provides that even when the force majeure such as in Article 269 does not exist, the Aims and Objectives of the UPC include: "to do such other things that are necessary for the achievement of the Aims, Objectives and aspirations of the Party."
82. What has to be done or what has to be established under the authority of Article 4(10) of the Party Constitution, has been clearly given and defined by the supreme organ of the Party namely, the Annual Delegates Conference (ADC). What has to be done or to be established must and can only be as directed by the ADC namely, "For the achievement of the Aims, objectives and aspirations of the Party." and for no other purpose.
83. It is and would be therefore outside the directive of the ADC for members of the Party to establish any organization or to do anything for the purpose of giving credence and credibility to the Movement or to the dictatorship. The Aims, Objectives and aspirations of the UPC do not include the Party itself or its members giving credence and credibility to any other political Party or to the adversaries of the Party.
84. Throughout its history and whenever Uganda was at peace, various means for the "achievement of the Aims, Objectives and aspirations of the Party" were constantly at play. There were, for instance, dancing and choir troupes, which popularized the Party and the policies of the Party. Activities for the "achievement of the Aims, objectives and aspirations of the Party", have always been controlled and directed by the organs of the Party.
85. Now that the force majeure in Article 269 of the NRA/NRM Constitution has imprisoned all the Party organs except the national Headquarters, there is a real and present danger of the dictatorship suborning and bribing every Tom, Dick, Harry, Juanita, Jane and Jamina to create their own improvisation organs allegedly under Article 4(10) of the Party Constitution not in the interests of the Party but for the purposes of causing disarray in the Party and giving credence and credibility to the dictatorship.
86. The dictatorship has been and is already at work. Although its force majeure has imprisoned the organs of the Party, it has also not nullified the UPC Constitution nor removed the Party president, the only person known as Party leader to and elected by the supreme organ of the Party. It follows therefore that every improvisation organ including every External Bureau, which does not acknowledge the supremacy of the Party Constitution and the supremacy of the Annual delegates Conference and the leadership of the Party President cannot be and is not a UPC organ.
87. Article 4(10) of the Party Constitution is not an authority to tamper with the Party Constitution and is not an authority to usurp the supremacy of the Annual Delegates Conference and does not empower any group or caucus, even under the force majeure, to impose someone unknown to the ADC to be the leader of the Party. The Party's one Constitution means one Party leader. Should there be any pretence that the Party has more than one leader, the others unknown to the Constitution and to the ADC would be imposters, frauds and agents of the dictatorship.
88. In 1995, a meeting was held in Kampala called the Leaders Conference. The attendants were Party leaders from all the Districts. The Party President had no part in organizing the conference or inviting the attendants. The Leaders Conference unanimously welcomed, praised and endorsed the institution of the PPC by the Party President and his appointment of the PPC members.
89. In July 1997 a Consultative Meeting was convened in Lusaka by the Party President. The Convention may wish to hear from two members from Canada who attended the Lusaka Meeting where much consideration and time was given to the improvisation structure to fight the dictatorship in the face of the force majeure.
90. The Lusaka Meeting made the PPC to be the government and the PRC to be the parliament of the Party. in order to link both the PPC and the PRC with the Constitution of the Party and the Annual delegates Conference (ADC), the Party president who is known to both and administers their directives is a member of the PPC and appoints the other members from a list submitted by the PRC and the PRC itself is constituted by a Proclamation by the Party President.
91. It was resolved at Lusaka and it is now part of the constitution of the PRC that should the Party president be incapacitated in the absence of the ADC, the PRC shall elect a successor who will also chair the PPC.
92. The Lusaka Meeting directed the PPC to find some ways to circumvent the force majeure in order to provide some form of elections for members of the PRC.

    The link between the PPC and the PRC as improvisation organs and the Party Constitution is the Party president whose chief responsibility because of being elected by the ADC is to defend, protect and preserve the Constitution of the Party.

93. It is that link which the dictatorship, detractors and the fifth columnists now want to destroy with the propaganda that:-
94. No one who is not in Uganda and is experiencing happenings in Uganda should have any voice in the formulation of UPC policies;
95. The UPC Constitution should be drastically re-written or even be broken up to comply with the terms of the force majeure; which amounts to dissolution of the UPC because a new Constitution not blessed by the ADC means a new Party; and
96. All persons who are presently ministers, ambassadors and conscripted members of the dictatorship, for the purposes of reconciliation, be allowed to formulate UPC policies against the dictatorship which would mean that the UPC and the Movement should have common membership until the UPC is killed by the dictatorship.
94. The Uganda People Congress is not a phony Party, which says one thing and does the opposite. In 1989 a definitive policy statement was issued against one-Party personal merit elections. In May 1996 another definitive policy statement was issued against one-Party personal merit elections. The 1989 and the 1996 Statements were both signed by Mrs. Cecilia Ogwal as the Assistant Secretary General. The Party President had no hand in both Statements and did not contribute to their terms.
95. The terms of both Statements are the same. Both of them exhort Party members not to give credence to the NRA/NRM one- party elections. By way of implementing the terms, the Party President clarified, in a message to the PPC dated 16 May 1996, that the UPC could not be seen to be struggling and campaigning for the enjoyment by the citizen of his/her inalienable human rights and freedoms while, at the same time suppressing the rights and freedoms of its members who, upon conscience, want or wanted to contest the one-party personal merit elections.
96. With the clarification, the Party President directed that only Officials, appointed by him, would be required to resign their posts if they wanted, upon conscience, to contest personal merit elections. Four officials defied the directive and were therefore dismissed. They are free to recant. They are also at risk of being expelled because Article 5(iii) of the UPC Constitution provides that membership is open to a citizen who "(iii) is not a member of any other Political Party." Conscription into the Movement which is a political Party and continued membership of an organ of the Movement is ground for expulsion.
97. In the struggle against the dictatorship, Party members at home and abroad must know that some members will fall by the wayside and some are bound to be bribed and suborned to work against the people and the Party. That much happened under Amin and it is happening now. What members of the UPC must always and at all times keep in mind is that the Party was not founded so that it is the stepping stone or ladder for some to acquire office whether as President or minister or member of Parliament or ambassador.
98. The mission of the Uganda Peoples Congress is the Independence of Uganda and the independence of every citizen. The independence of the citizen means his or her being able to enjoy and exercise all his/her inalienable human rights and freedoms. It also means the eradication of poverty, prevention and treatment of disease and acquisition of knowledge and skill through his/her work and brainpower coupled with the provision of enabling environment by the government.
99. In two Administrations in the 1960 and in the early 1980s your Party has shown to the people of Uganda that it can and is able and capable of providing the necessary enabling environment for every household to have a high standard of living, to be healthy and to acquire knowledge and skills. That is why on the eve of elections, the enemies of the people of Uganda twice suborned the military to prevent the UPC from winning the elections and serve the people.
100. Fellow citizens, you are young and your country, Uganda, is also a young country. Make what you want for yourself to be also what you want for Uganda.
101. You want to be free, work also for Uganda to be free of dictatorship.
102. You want to be healthy, work also for the people of Uganda to be healthy.
103. You want to acquire knowledge and skills, work also for the people of Uganda, particularly the Youth, to acquire knowledge and skills.
104. You want to enjoy and exercise your freedom of conscience, work also for every citizen of Uganda to enjoy and exercise his/her freedom of Conscience.
105. You want to enjoy and exercise your human right to impart and receive ideas from every source, work also for every citizen of Uganda to enjoy and exercise his/her human right to impart and receive ideas from every source.
106. You want to enjoy and exercise your human right and freedom of assembly and your right to assemble freely; work also for every citizen of Uganda to enjoy and exercise his/her freedom of assembly and his/her right to assemble freely.
107. You want to enjoy and exercise your freedom of association and your right to associate with other persons and in particular to form or belong to a political Party, work also for every citizen of Uganda to enjoy and exercise his/her freedom of association and his/her right to associate with other persons and in particular to form or belong to a political Party.
102. It is said that the night is darkest when dawn is about to come. Let this Convention usher the dawn for Uganda. The dictatorship is doomed. The efforts of the UPC and the UN Declaration of Human Rights will kill it. I wish you all success in your struggle and campaign. Next Convention in Kampala.

I say all this in the spirit of the Uganda Motto: For God and My Country

A. Milton Obote

Lusaka, Zambia.
15 July, 1998.