Former Prime Minister of Uganda and leader of the faded “Go Forward” movement John Patrick Amama Mbabazi has come out to condemn the manner in which Uganda Police and the military have handled a number of political candidates during the ongoing campaigns for next year’s elections.
The security agencies over the past weeks have been on the spot for brutally manhandling opposition presidential candidates especially NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu (Bobi Wine) and FDC’s Patrick Oboi Amuriat (POA).
While speaking as chief guest at the launch a book titled “Pieces of Time, the Silent Witness” at the Kampala Serena Hotel on Thursday, Mbabazi said he was not pleased the behaviour of the security bodies, even though they have a mandate to ensure law and order.
“I have said time and again that the level of civilization of any society is the extent to which it applies the rule of law. In Uganda today, I am not happy about behavior of police but the police have a duty to enforce the law,” he said.
Mbabazi added;- “It is their job to make sure that there is law and order, that no one is above the law. But they must do it humanely. The response of the police must be proportionate to the threat from those who are breaking the law. And I think this is doable. Where people exercise their freedoms within the law. That is what the constitution demands. That is what civilization demands,”
Nonetheless, Mbabazi said the current situation in Uganda is still incomparable to the country’s tough times of the past.
“You cannot compare today and the times Pamela has described in her book,” he added.
In the launched book, the author Pamela Ankunda narrates how former president Milton Obote’s soldiers killed her father. Ankunda said that her father was buried alive buried by Obote gunmen.
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