On 27 December 2017, President Yoweri Museveni signed the Constitutional Amendment Bill No. 2 2017, commonly referred to as the age-limit removal bill, into law. The bill removes the age-limit of 75 years for presidential candidates, and extends both the presidential and the parliamentary tenure from five to seven years.

In his new year’s message — which radio and TV stations were ordered to broadcast live by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) — the President thanked the 317 MPs who had voted for it, ominously stating that this had ‘enabled us to avoid the more complicated paths that would have been required.’ He did not, however, specify what these ‘more complicated paths’ would have been.

Older Ugandan citizens in particular are well aware of the fact that post-colonial Uganda has not yet had a peaceful transfer of power, and with a memory of the long civil war, they will see this as a veiled threat of military involvement. The bill had faced widespread and passionate opposition.

Several groups comprising lawyers, opposition and civil society plan to challenge the bill in court, but are waiting for the document to be gazetted first. In addition to issues concerning the process — including bribery and mishandling of how it was managed in parliament — one of the critical issues will be the commencement date of the act of parliament.

With respect to the term extension, this would either be the date when the president signed it into law — which would end in 2025 — or the first sitting of parliament in 2023. Both contravene Article 96, which states that ‘Parliament shall stand dissolved upon expiration of its term as prescribed in Article 77.’ Article 77 defines the length of the parliamentary term as five years.

Extending the current term would mean to legislate retroactively, and it has been argued that changing the term length would have required a separate bill. Lawyers also pointed out that parliament has not passed any law to operationalise Article 259 that allows amendments of the constitution.

This segment is taken from the Uganda section of our East Africa Politics & Security publication. If you wish learn more about this topic, the country or discuss the paper with us, contact Tom Gray.