Nation Publications Limited

A delegation from Uganda, comprising legislators from opposition parties and officials from Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), are in Malawi to learn from their Malawian counterparts.

The visit has been facilitated by the Centre for Multiparty Democracy (CMD), Malawi Chapter.

The Ugandan delegation also interacted with the media and members of civil society groups before they left for the lake district of Mangochi in southern Malawi for a refresher.

Speaking at Sunbird Mount Soche, a Ugandan leader of delegation, Mathias Nsubuga Birekeraawo, an opposition MP for Democratic Party, said multiparty democracy is sometimes hampered by the arrogance of ruling parties.

Birekeraawo said apart from using State media for campaign and hate speeches, the ruling party in Uganda funds private media institutions to run news items in its favour.

“I hear the same things also happen here. There was a monitor from Uganda in 2009 elections here and we heard [through documentation] that there was a programme on State radio called Makiloyobasi that castigated opposition members,” he said.

But NRM governance adviser Hippo Twebaze said ruling parties have to sometimes stand by their ideologies.

Patrick Mwondha, another Ugandan opposition MP, said governments have used a colonial law of sedition to silence the opposition and media, sending people into laughter when he said “telling an incumbent President that he has failed in his manifesto” has become seditious.

UDF deputy secretary general Hophmally Makande, a victim of sedition law himself having been convicted and jailed before the High Court acquitted him, agreed with Mwondha that sedition law ought to be amended.