Uganda does not have to choose between military guardianship and violent chaos. A constitutional, citizen-owned transition remains the only legitimate path forward.
Uganda is increasingly being presented with a false choice: accept the existing political order, including its emerging succession arrangements, or risk descending into the chaos witnessed in Libya, Sudan or Somalia.
Citizens are being urged to accommodate the political mobilisation of the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) and the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU), supposedly as a pragmatic guarantee of stability.
But stability at what cost? Are Ugandans being asked to surrender constitutional principles to those who claim that only their continued political dominance can save the country? A transition cannot be “realistic” when it accommodates a constitutional aberration. Nor can an arrangement acquire legitimacy simply because its proponents invoke the danger of instability.
Uganda needs neither a military-managed succession nor a leap into the unknown. It needs a constitutional, citizen-owned transition founded on popular sovereignty, accountable institutions and the rule of law.
The false lessons of Libya, Sudan and Somalia
The invocation of Libya, Sudan and Somalia to discourage resistance to military-managed succession is historically misleading. Their tragedies cannot be reduced to the proposition that citizens must submit to dominant political or military actors to preserve national unity.
In different ways, military autocracy, armed conflict, foreign intervention and the weakening or destruction of constitutional institutions contributed to their respective crises. These countries followed different historical trajectories, but their experiences demonstrate the dangers of concentrated coercive power, institutional breakdown and the failure to resolve political conflicts through legitimate processes.
The lesson is not that military guardianship is indispensable to national survival. It is that the destruction of institutions capable of restraining power and mediating political disputes can propel nations towards catastrophe. Uganda must learn from these experiences without importing their histories into its own future. Our choice is not between an imposed succession and state disintegration. It is between entrenching personalised power and building a constitutional order in which citizens can determine their own destiny.
Uganda’s history is the true warning
As Uganda marks 64 years of independence, our own history offers a sobering warning against treating force as the ultimate guarantor of national unity.
In 1966, Milton Obote used the military to overthrow the constitutional settlement established at independence in 1962. Idi Amin’s 1971 coup entrenched military rule, violence and institutional collapse. Subsequent conflicts and political upheavals culminated in the armed seizure of power in 1986.
These episodes should have taught us that military intervention in political succession does not resolve the national question. It changes the custodians of power while leaving the underlying constitutional problem unresolved.
As Wangoola-Wangoola Ndawula reminds us in his reflection on Busoga and Uganda’s national question, “Temulina kyemutugamba”—you have nothing more to tell us. Ugandans have heard successive promises of national salvation. What they need is not another group claiming a monopoly on patriotism, but a constitutional order that allows citizens to determine their future.
The colonial inheritance compounds this challenge. Colonial security institutions were designed primarily to protect an exploitative political order rather than serve citizens as sovereign owners of their country. After independence, instruments of coercion survived, and successive political leaders repeatedly deployed them to preserve power.
In Slow Poison, Mahmood Mamdani examines the wider geopolitical interests surrounding the 1971 coup, including British and Israeli interests. This history cautions against simplistic narratives presenting military interventions as purely patriotic undertakings detached from wider struggles for power.
Today, the language of sovereignty and foreign interference is again being deployed in political mobilisation by the CDF and PLU. Allegations of foreign influence are also used to question whether opposition figures, including Bobi Wine, should participate in Uganda’s political future.
Foreign interference is a legitimate concern for any sovereign state. But it cannot become a pretext for excluding political opponents, undermining constitutional freedoms or treating citizens’ political choices as threats to national security. Patriotism cannot be the exclusive property of those who command the guns. A sovereign Republic is one in which citizens can hold their leaders accountable without being branded enemies of the nation.
The Rwabwogo testimony and the professional soldier’s dilemma
Odrek Rwabwogo’s public account of what he witnessed during the 2026 elections raises grave questions about the conduct of uniformed personnel. His allegations include the beating of voters, entry into polling stations, gunfire used to disperse citizens and the stuffing of ballot boxes. These serious allegations demand independent investigation and accountability.
The reported mobilisation around the PLU, including the participation of serving military personnel in signing its registers, intensifies the concern. When the military becomes associated with a partisan political project, professional soldiers are placed in an untenable position: loyalty to the Constitution risks being confused with loyalty to a political faction or individual.
A military divided along partisan lines cannot remain a neutral guardian of the Republic. Once political opponents are portrayed as threats to the State, the distinction between protecting the country and protecting a particular political establishment begins to disappear.
That distinction is important. The State is not the property of the government of the day, the ruling party, the CDF or any family. Security institutions exist to defend the constitutional Republic and all its citizens, including those who oppose the government.
The 1995 settlement: The cure we must not abandon
Uganda’s 1995 Constitution sought to break with the history of military intervention and politicised coercion. Article 208 requires the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) to be national in character, patriotic, professional, disciplined and subordinate to civilian authority. It expressly requires the armed forces to be non-partisan.
These are constitutional obligations, not decorative aspirations. The Uganda Law Society has identified partisan political mobilisation by serving military leadership as contrary to Article 208 and the UPDF Act. The constitutional concern does not disappear merely because a court has not yet pronounced on it. The absence of a judicial determination is no licence to disregard an express constitutional duty.
A professional military must remain outside partisan competition precisely because it possesses organised coercive power that ordinary citizens do not. Its neutrality protects both the Republic and the military itself.
The answer is not to diminish the military’s legitimate role in national defence, but to restore the constitutional boundaries that make that role legitimate.
The gun may defend the Republic. It may not constitute the Republic.
National dialogue: Consent requires citizens
Frederick Jjuuko and Sam Tindifa have advanced the idea of a bottom-up People’s Dialogue, while Professor Ogenga Otunnu has proposed a five-year Consociational Democracy Agreement. These proposals recognise that Uganda’s political crisis cannot be resolved merely by negotiating the distribution of power among existing elites.
Before deciding what should be negotiated, however, we must establish what cannot legitimately be surrendered: constitutional supremacy, civilian authority, the rule of law, political freedoms, credible elections, institutional independence and the non-partisanship of the armed forces.
The Constitution can be amended through its prescribed procedures. Constitutional change is not itself an aberration. But a dialogue that treats military partisanship as the price of stability would compromise the very constitutional order it claims to rescue.
A People’s Dialogue must therefore be genuinely owned by the people. It should emerge from communities and districts, bringing together civil society, cultural institutions, labour organisations, young people and ordinary citizens. Its purpose must be to agree on the rules by which Uganda is governed, not merely to negotiate who inherits power.
Restoring constitutional trust
General Kahinda Otafiire’s public criticism of the CDF’s conduct is significant because it reflects unease about the relationship between military authority and constitutional governance. The concerns raised by the Uganda Law Society and other legal analysts point to the same institutional problem.
Lawyer Gawaya Tegulle has petitioned the Constitutional Court over alleged violations of Article 208 and the UPDF Act. The petition illustrates the desired resort to constitutional remedies to restore the boundaries between military service and partisan politics.
Calls for presidential impeachment, criminal proceedings against military commanders and alternative forms of military-backed mobilisation may arise from genuine frustration. But they must not obscure the central task: restoring a lawful political order in which disputes are resolved through independent institutions rather than force, intimidation or competing claims to military authority.
The Republic cannot rebuild constitutional trust if every political dispute becomes a contest over who commands the coercive instruments of the State.
First secure the Republic, then rebuild
A credible transition requires a clear sequence of action.
First, secure and de-escalate. Constitutional guarantees must become effective in practice. Political freedom, credible elections, judicial independence, media freedom and the strict neutrality of security services must be protected. Political prisoners should be released, and intimidation and suppression of lawful political participation must end. Citizens cannot freely negotiate their future while facing fear or coercion.
Second, renew the National Compact. An inclusive People’s Dialogue should begin at district and regional levels before progressing to a national forum. Civil society, cultural institutions, labour organisations, young people and ordinary citizens must participate. The objective is to establish governance rules that protect future generations, not divide political offices among current power holders.
Third, rebuild the Nation. Constitutional reform must be accompanied by national reconstruction. Land reform, regional inequality, access to public services, economic opportunity and transparent institutions require sustained attention. Political stability that leaves these underlying grievances unresolved will remain fragile, however forcefully it is imposed.
These stages are inseparable. Security without freedom becomes repression. Dialogue without constitutional guarantees becomes elite bargaining. Reconstruction without accountability becomes another promise that citizens are asked to trust without the means to enforce it.
Political legitimacy must return to the citizen
The military derives its authority from the Constitution. A government derives its democratic legitimacy from the people. Neither can reverse that relationship by presenting itself as the indispensable owner or guardian of the Republic.
Ugandans must not be compelled to surrender their sovereignty out of fear that rejecting an imposed succession arrangement will produce chaos. Such a bargain would reduce citizens to supplicants, grateful for basic order rather than entitled to demand accountability, dignity and constitutional government.
The unfinished promise of independence requires a different settlement: political power must be temporary, institutions must be stronger than individuals, and security forces must serve the State rather than a party or faction. No individual, however powerful, can stand above the constitutional order. No political organisation, however patriotic its rhetoric, can substitute itself for the sovereign people.
Uganda’s next chapter must restore the citizen to the centre of the Republic, establish institutions capable of restraining power and ensure that the Constitution governs both those who exercise authority and those who aspire to inherit it.
Which way, Uganda? The answer need not be chaos, paralysis or permanent rule by fear. There is another way: constitutional transition, citizen participation, institutional accountability and national reconstruction.
The Republic offers that possibility to all its citizens. The question is whether we are prepared to take it.
The writer is a senior advocate and former Minister.
Email: asumankiyingi.ak@gmail.com