Soldiers in parliament: Military power and legislative authority in Uganda

Abstract

in late april 1994, 10 members of uganda’s military were ‘elected’ to seats in the country’s Constituent Assembly (CA), which was tasked with ratifying a new constitution.¹ Of the 30 nominees, those chosen in the ‘freest and fairest CA election so far’ were unsurprisingly among the ‘originals’ of the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebellion of 1981–1986, who now populated the upper echelons of the eponymous national army.² While the final tally followed 16 h of deliberation spread over 2 days, little public debate surrounded this particular mode of military intrusion into Uganda’s political arena. One view held that the new NRA delegates were ‘a ray of sunshine in the murky politics of Uganda’.³

Today, in the current 11th Parliament, the national army—now called the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF)—still holds 10 (less than 2 percent) of the legislature’s 556 seats. This unusual arrangement has roots in the regime and rebel politics of Uganda’s civil war and was ultimately enshrined in the 1995 Constitution, which grants seats to a range of ‘interest groups’ from the ‘army, youth, workers, persons with disabilities and other groups as parliament may determine’.⁴ This system has survived for nearly three decades, across seven parliaments, and against the backdrop of the country’s transition from a single to a multiparty system undergirded by a ‘hybrid’ authoritarian regime.⁵

Most African states require soldiers to resign from the military before entering politics.⁶ While the inclusion of soldiers in parliament is nearly unique to Uganda, it nevertheless raises important questions about democratization, political institutionalization, and civil–military relations in Africa.⁷ Yet, in Uganda, this phenomenon remains poorly understood. Correspondingly, there has been very little scholarly attention paid to the relationship between military institutions and national legislatures. This article tells the story of Uganda’s experience with having soldiers in parliament in a country where the military has historically played an outsized role in politics and society, intervening directly through coups d’état in 1971, 1980, and 1985.⁸ The ‘militarization of political culture’ has arguably accelerated since 1986, or ‘year zero’, which marked the ascent of President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM).⁹

We argue that the practice of military inclusion in parliament is a result of Uganda’s civil–military relations, which include three key components. First, NRM ideology provides a justification for soldiers in parliament. Second, parliamentary seats are patronage-based rewards for loyal NRM cadres. Third, the exertion of political influence through the army’s Members of Parliament (MPs) frustrates political opposition, enforces NRM party discipline, and gathers intelligence on lawmakers critical of the President. Taken together, these components comprise a strategy that bolsters the stability and dominance of the NRM regime.

In what follows, we situate the Ugandan case within the broader scholarship on African legislatures and civil–military relations. Subsequently, we provide a historical background on military power and legislative authority in Uganda. We then develop our argument and provide evidence that ideology, patronage, and influence motivate the designation and functions of the 10 soldiers who sit in the Ugandan Parliament. Data are drawn from a review of government publications, the Ugandan press, and policy reports, as well as original interviews. The field interviews required access to a small pool of subjects that follow strict chains of command in an environment where conventional assumptions about fieldwork methodology, research ethics, and power asymmetries do not always apply.¹⁰ Nevertheless, the handful of hour-long interviews with parliamentary officials, current UPDF officers, and former MPs, some of whom have been anonymized for this article, provide crucial context and granularity that would have otherwise been unavailable.

Soldiers and parliament in scholarly perspective

The story of Uganda’s military and its parliament contains two scholarly subplots. The first focuses on broader patterns of democratization, electoral politics, and the divergent development of Africa’s legislatures.¹¹ In states like Uganda, transitions from single-party to multiparty politics often intensify elite power dynamics while not leading to greater independence for national legislatures.¹² Empirically, global indices such as Freedom House rank Uganda quite low in electoral processes, political pluralism and participation, and broader functioning of government.¹³ Homegrown scores of Uganda’s 10th Parliament (2018–2019) also show a lacklustre performance of its legislators.¹⁴

The second subplot examines Africa’s civil–military relations, which are largely viewed as aberrations from Samuel Huntington’s concept of ‘objective civilian control’ where professional armies remain siloed from politics.¹⁵ Regimes in Africa, in contrast, have typically sought to escape the conundrum of having to seek protection both by and from the military.¹⁶ This leads to ‘coup-proofing’ strategies that incumbents deploy to manage risks and potential confrontations with soldiers through various balancing acts.¹⁷

The sheer number of coups and military regimes in Africa corresponds with a modal view of civil–military relations that sees coup d’état as the central mechanism for military interference in politics.¹⁸ More recently, however, scholars have begun to move ‘beyond the coup’ to consider a range of outcomes in Africa’s civil–military relations that result from different configurations of military and political power.¹⁹ Newer conceptualizations include linkages with broader society, where the ‘civil’ part of the equation demonstrably matters.²⁰ This work shows multiple modes of civil–military relations that do not involve coups and multiple ways for the military to influence politics. This approach also avoids the dominant assumption that soldiers intruding in politics are unprofessional and engender political instability.²¹ Instead, it opens the aperture to view a variety of actors involved in the many trade-offs between regime governance, coup-proofing, and military effectiveness.²² This study builds on the ‘beyond the coup’ insights by putting the legislative and military subplots in dialogue. It shows how the development of Uganda’s legislature has abetted institutional conditions that help sustain a distinct, ‘integrated’ mode of civil–military relations associated with the imperatives of regime security and political stability.²³

A history of soldiers in parliament

In the early years of independence, Milton Obote’s regime used Uganda’s growing armed forces to try to tame an unstable political coalition and suppress dissent. This strategy soon backfired with a coup d’état by Idi Amin, whose regime further consolidated the army as the central actor in Ugandan politics and society.²⁴ Thus, having soldiers in Uganda’s legislature has pre-NRM antecedents.

In the year following Idi Amin’s 1979 ouster, the Moshi Unity Conference appointed Yusuf Lule as the inaugural Chair of the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) and formed the 30-member National Consultative Council (NCC) as a ‘surrogate parliament’.²⁵ Among those ‘elected’ to the NCC were members of Museveni’s FRONASA and Milton Obote’s Kikoosi Malum, the dominant anti-Amin armed forces.²⁶ Lule’s successor, Godfrey Binaisa, expanded the NCC to include 10 seats for the newly formed Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA).²⁷ In May of 1980, Military Commission Chair Paulo Muwanga directed the body to assume all presidential powers in the country—essentially a coup. This move was primarily aimed at preparing for the return of Milton Obote, who later that year won fraudulent elections with support from the UNLA’s Kikosi Malum faction, now essentially an armed wing of Obote’s revitalized Uganda People’s Congress (UPC).²⁸ The ‘Obote II’ regime restructured the NCC into what became Uganda’s 4th Parliament. The UPC’s legislative majority was bolstered by the continued practice of allotting 10 seats to the national army, among them Kikoosi Malum loyalists.²⁹ Yet army influence over the legislature unravelled due to weak leadership, sectarian divisions within the UNLA,³⁰ and the death of the Army Chief of Staff.³¹ Tensions culminated in mid-1985, when UNLA Major General Bazlio Okello led a mutiny in the northern town of Kitgum, precipitating Obote’s ouster and the installation of a military junta.³²

The NRA’s 1986 victory sought to create a broad-based government initially envisioned for the UNLF.³³ As a former UNLF official, Museveni had witnessed the persistent elite polarization that led to its demise. While his new political dispensation sought wholesale regime change, it nevertheless continued the practice of having soldiers in parliament. Uganda’s new national legislature, the National Resistance Council (NRC), issued Legal Notice No. 1/1986 that ‘constitutionalized’ the ‘Movement’ across political institutions, which signalled the shift in nomenclature from the NRA to the NRM as the dominant political force in Uganda.³⁴ As such, the NRC featured the formal representation of army officers among its 38 appointees.³⁵ In February 1989, Museveni held snap elections intended to consolidate the dominance of the NRM in an expanded NRC. The NRA Council, strengthened by a Statute Amendment that included the military in the ‘discussion, adoption, and promulgation of the Constitution’, appointed 10 NRA soldiers to the legislature.³⁶

In 1994, the NRC was replaced by the CA, to which the army formalized the allocation of 10 seats. Uganda’s 1995 Constitution then enshrined this practice and set the scene for legislative elections. Although the new one-party ‘Movement system’ merely papered over the army’s organizational hegemony in politics, Uganda’s 6th and 7th Parliaments (1996–2005) were relatively more effective and autonomous vis-à-vis Museveni’s executive dominance.³⁷ A crop of ‘reformers’ in the 6th Parliament embraced their new constitutional powers by forming working coalitions through a committee system and taking advantage of newly available resources.³⁸ However, by the 7th Parliament, Museveni ultimately ‘muscled through the policy he wanted’³⁹ and was more successful in undermining parliament’s newfound independence by dispensing patronage to anti-reformer coalitions and to allies during electoral campaigns.⁴⁰

Soldiers in a multiparty parliament

For 19 years, Uganda’s ‘No-Party’ system was key to entrenching the NRM regime, justified on the grounds that political parties sowed social and sectarian divisions. Yet in 2005, in no small part due to donor pressure, Museveni made a theatrical turnaround and supported a referendum where Ugandans overwhelmingly voted to re-establish a multiparty system of government.⁴¹

Since the 8th Parliament, the NRM has consistently maintained dominance, a trend that began with the transition from the Movement to a multiparty system. This dominance has weakened the legislature’s independence and effectiveness, as the NRM has exploited lawmakers’ perpetual need to campaign, making some vulnerable to buy-offs and intimidation.⁴² Where observers had initially expected electoral reforms to remove UPDF soldiers from parliament, Museveni refused. In the face of petitions from opposition and civil society groups, he insisted that UPDF lawmakers remain essential vanguards of multiparty democracy, ‘creating harmony in and around the House and to serve as a stabilizing factor of the current politics in the country’.⁴³ In contrast, many lawmakers argue that continuing to have soldiers in parliament ‘no longer serves its original purpose’ and instead is a strategy, as we will show, that ‘Museveni uses … to reward loyal army officers and to intimidate MPs and the Speaker to pass the bills he likes’.⁴⁴

‘Observation posts’: Explaining soldiers in parliament

The NRA’s 1986 victory brought significant renovations to regime politics and saw a corresponding effort to restructure the military along more bureaucratic and meritocratic lines. The ‘demystification of the gun’ policy symbolically sought to show ordinary Ugandans that the NRA’s transition from a guerrilla force into a national army was an extension of political–military liberation.⁴⁵ This also meant curtailing the sectarian divisions, corporatist interests, and predatory excesses of past armies, whilst also incorporating defeated armed factions and conducting society-wide recruitment. The goal was not to completely insulate the military from political institutions, but to create ‘conditions in which it cannot be activist on terms dictated by itself’.⁴⁶

By 1995, the same constitution that allocated parliamentary seats to the army explicitly subordinated it to civilian authority—at least on paper.⁴⁷ The constitution’s preamble also contained a seemingly innocuous phrase—‘recalling our history’—ostensibly intended to remind Ugandans of past upheaval associated with the misuse of military power.⁴⁸ This phrase also yielded a circular argument for the NRM: Politics in Uganda requires military involvement because the military needs to understand how politics works in order to avoid military involvement in politics. In other words, this logic creates a pretext for the military to enter politics should there be any ‘misunderstanding’. As Mugisha Muntu argued at the time, ‘the role of the army in politics is to ensure the army is aware of, and participates in, what is going on in national politics’, and that, ‘if politicians mess up due to self-interest, the army is not taken unaware’.⁴⁹ The implication here is that if civilian politicians are identified as sources of instability, corrective intervention by the army is not a misuse of military power but a necessary measure to protect the Constitution.

To square this circle, consider how military power in Uganda has been reconfigured as a constitutive dimension of regime politics through an ‘integrated’ mode of civil–military relations, where a ‘military ethos’ undergirds nearly all aspects of state authority, even among segments of the political opposition.⁵⁰ To maintain hegemony and stability, Museveni has engineered an ongoing, purposeful ‘fusion’ of political and military power.⁵¹ While the UPDF has become increasingly professionalized in terms of capacity and effectiveness, personal loyalties to the president and his retinue still play a significant role in how it operates, which is often as an instrument of control over Ugandan politics and society.⁵² In other words, this is an arrangement where the UPDF is essentially an armed wing of the ruling NRM party constantly engaged in self-maintenance on behalf of its leader.⁵³ This strategy plays out alongside an array of parallel security and intelligence agencies that counterbalance one another and keep a close watch on society.⁵⁴ It is thus unsurprising that surveillance and control extends to Uganda’s legislature, where the relationships between the NRM, the UPDF, and the Ugandan Parliament are simultaneously blurred and consolidated into a single field of power dictated by the president.

In addition, Uganda’s integrated mode regards the army’s relationship to civilians, not civilian authority, as the most salient feature of successful civil–military relations.⁵⁵ As Noble Mayombo, among the first army delegates to the CA, argued, ‘the place of the army is the civil society and not the barracks and the army must participate in the political administration of the country’.⁵⁶ As such, the UPDF’s role in the legislature is to ‘ensure unity, independence, and democracy’.⁵⁷ The army declares itself neutral but ‘pro-people’, non-partisan but politically conscious, and by definition involved in politics by virtue of its defence of the constitution, thus legitimizing military power as a basis for regime authority.⁵⁸ In other words, as ‘a servant of the people’,⁵⁹ the Ugandan army is centered in politics and society.

Another UPDF MP, Ivan Koreta, asserted that because parliament is a representative civilian body, it is an appropriate venue for soldiers and politicians ‘searching for solutions to … common problems’ and where ‘interaction with civilians is beneficial to stability in this country’.⁶⁰ The official government position is that the UPDF is not interfering in politics by sitting in the national legislature, but rather that their participation is ‘like an Observation Post (OP) where they sit and watch and support whatever the people want’.⁶¹ UPDF spokesman Felix Kulayigye confirmed that ‘The UPDF in parliament is not only as an observation and listening post but also as a fighting patrol in purely military terms, for purposes of avoiding surprise, to all as they continue to foster harmony pursuant to the constitution’.⁶² One parliamentarian succinctly asserted: ‘It is not a question of us allowing the UPDF to sit in parliament – the UPDF allows parliament to exist’.⁶³

When soldiers occupy their ‘observation posts’ in parliament, they are fortifying three mechanisms of Uganda’s integrated mode of civil–military relations, all intended to centralize political authority. First, the NRM’s public justification for the UPDF holding legislative seats draws on their ideological foundations developed as a guerrilla force and adapted to regime politics after victory. Second, parliamentary seats are sinecures dispensed directly by President Museveni to loyal soldiers as a way of personally managing the UPDF through patronage. Third, the practice of influence considers the army’s presence in a civilian institution as symbolic and practical, indicating a readiness to informally exert pressure on decision-making when necessary. These three factors do not necessarily operate independently, and there can, at times, be tensions among them. For instance, there are trade-offs between influencing actors through patronage or coercion. Moreover, as the pool of patronage recipients that share NRM ideology shrinks over time, it can undermine broader influence upon a young society in transition.⁶⁴

A snapshot of soldiers in parliament

An analysis of the 48 UPDF MPs since 1994 shows that more than half have been senior officers and ‘historicals’—veterans of the NRA’s bush war. A substantial number hail from Museveni’s home region of Western Uganda, tracking with their dominance of the UPDF’s top echelons, estimated at 67 percent.⁶⁵ As ‘historicals’ have aged out through deaths or retirements, a more diverse number of ‘Young Turks’—those joining the army after 1988—have replaced them. A rule was recently adopted requiring that 3 of the 10 army MPs must be women.⁶⁶

The selection of which soldiers will serve in parliament involves the UPDF High Command submitting 20–30 nominees to Museveni, who winnows the list to 15, after which the Army Council approves 10 by consensus. Should consensus fail, the Electoral Commission oversees an election through a secret ballot for members of the Army Council to vote. Nominees are prohibited from campaigning and are automatically disqualified if found to influence the process.⁶⁷ Those selected serve a 5-year term that can be renewed by the Army Council based on ambiguous ‘performance’ criteria.

As permitted by the UPDF Act, most army MPs opt for higher parliamentary salaries over military salaries,⁶⁸ which is typically 25 million USH ($6,500) per month⁶⁹ vs. the UPDF’s paltry pay scales.⁷⁰ Like all MPs, they receive a one-time lump sum of 200 million USH ($56,500) to buy a new vehicle. Because they are considered national representatives, they may log mileage for any travel throughout Uganda, expenses which range from 10 to 30 million USH ($2,600–$52,500) per month, compounded by allowances of 150,000 USH ($40) per night, not to mention up to 1.9 million USH ($500) per day for international travel.⁷¹ In addition, army MPs are entitled to additional allowances for any work they do for the UPDF that falls outside of their parliamentary duties.

Ideology: From rebels to rulers

Since 1986, regime politics in Uganda has been infused with a certain ‘ideological provenance’, a residual feature of Museveni’s bush war that shaped NRM’s orientation towards military and civilian institutions.⁷² Many accounts of the NRA rebellion recognize the central role of ideology in organizational cohesion and in mobilizing popular support.⁷³ Today, however, ideology in Uganda has become ephemeral, shifting in response to political expedience and resource needs.⁷⁴ Nonetheless, it remains a central feature of Uganda’s civil–military relations, where ideological arguments justify having UPDF soldiers in the national legislature.

By ideology, we mean the values that drive political goals. In Africa, Marxist-Leninism has influenced Pan-African nationalism, anti-colonial liberation ideologies, and post-independence political movements.⁷⁵ Historically, ideology was associated with state development strategies.⁷⁶ But as coups and rebellions reshaped Africa, ideology became a force of national renewal, often led by military power. ‘Reform’ rebels such as members of Uganda’s NRA were guided by revolutionary ideologies aimed at building a ‘new kind of state’ that would transcend sectarian divides.⁷⁷ In fact, regimes in Uganda, Rwanda, and Ethiopia became a regional ‘collective’ based on ideological affinities and shared revolutionary ideas.⁷⁸

The NRA’s ideology arose from the practical needs of fighting a guerrilla war. It also drew upon principles of democratic centralism acquired from training in Mozambique and knowledge of Frantz Fanon’s theory of violence.⁷⁹ Resistance Councils integrated communities into the NRA’s politico-administrative structure that provided public goods and ‘political education’.⁸⁰ Political Commissars enforced a strict Code of Conduct between civilians and fighting units, and a 10-point program defined NRA’s relationship with society and broadcasted how it would govern after victory through democracy, national unity, and economic growth.⁸¹

The NRA’s organizational strength played a key role in winning the war and establishing a durable regime after victory.⁸² Much of this depended on rebuilding the national army and correcting the mistakes of previous sectarian forces that fostered indiscipline, violence, and impunity. The NRA believed that these issues stemmed from the lack of a coherent ideology, which could be addressed by reorienting the army.⁸³

Once the rebels became rulers, circumstances changed, but ‘the code of organization was the same’ for the NRA,⁸⁴ whose victory ‘only set the stage for the continuation of war by other means’.⁸⁵ Museveni sought to create a diverse and disciplined force that would help to restore state legitimacy following a period of institutional decay and political unrest. Central to this project was a mode of civil–military relations that could dominate all state institutions, an arrangement often associated with ideological regimes.⁸⁶ This ideological approach to civil–military relations continues to justify having soldiers in parliament, framed as a means to remedy the transgressions of past regimes. Despite noting a sign in the barracks in 1986 reading ‘Keep Politics out of the Military’, the UPDF spokesman acknowledged that the ‘army had created the government’ by virtue of ‘knowing our history’.⁸⁷

In the bush, NRA fighters received political education to grasp Ugandan history. Once in power, the army’s role in parliament was not to interfere with its proceedings but to be part of decision-making processes, especially in national security matters, and to explain decisions to fellow soldiers—although it remains unclear whether this actually occurs. Correspondingly, long-standing army MP Elly Tumwine has asserted that ‘the military needs to be “politically conscious” of Uganda’s history’.⁸⁸ Similar claims also justify unelected soldiers in parliament as necessary for democracy. Tumwine rhetorically asked, ‘who is more concerned about establishing democracy in this country than the UPDF?’ He argued, ‘the presence of the military in parliament is to maintain harmony between the military and politicians because that’s where the problem has been coming from’.⁸⁹

Today, when former rebels have become entrenched rulers, ideology in Uganda is less a coherent set of political ideas and more a marker for the political dominance of the NRM and the UPDF. This holds even for ruling party MPs, who attend an annual retreat at the Kyankwanzi National Institute, where they don military fatigues and receive military training and ideological indoctrination.⁹⁰ Yet ideology resonates little with younger generations of Ugandans beyond a sort of obligatory reverence, and there is occasional, albeit unsuccessful, push-back by civil society.⁹¹ In 2019, for instance, Africa Human Rights Monitoring, a local NGO, challenged the constitutionality of the army’s legislative seats. However, the Constitutional Court rejected the petition, ruling that having soldiers in parliament was consistent with the constitution, and claiming the framers intended as such even after Uganda transitioned to a multi-party system.⁹² Such episodes reflect the wider inability of civil society to counter the NRM’s ideological foundations and its ongoing presence in different segments of Uganda’s political system.

Patronage: M7 giveth and M7 taketh away

Patronage has long been a constitutive dimension of Ugandan politics.⁹³ Within civil–military relations, patronage has been blamed for rampant corruption,⁹⁴ but also credited with successful counterinsurgency strategies.⁹⁵ Patronage politics also shapes the relationship between Uganda’s military and legislature, where loyalty to the president is rewarded, and disloyalty is punished. Over time, Museveni’s involvement in selecting or removing UPDF members from parliament has become increasingly direct.

Patronage is a central characteristic of neopatrimonialism and refers to how rulers like Museveni maintain political authority by dispensing or withholding access to privilege, wealth, and status in regime politics in exchange for personalized support.⁹⁶ Although patronage does not always thwart the institutionalization of national legislatures,⁹⁷ it flows through Uganda’s state institutions as a set of ‘invisible choices’.⁹⁸ Patronage remains a key feature in how Museveni has managed foreign aid and recent presidential elections.⁹⁹ The ‘militarization of patronage’ explains the role of the UPDF in adding a coercive edge to the distribution of state resources.¹⁰⁰

Maintaining army positions in parliament has been part of the NRM’s strategy to build a network of loyal cadres, as being an army MP is a coveted position with few responsibilities. Yet not every UPDF member is considered eligible. Parliamentary seats are carefully allocated as part of Museveni’s patronage system to reward loyal ‘historicals’ and co-opt ‘legacy generals’ who might otherwise challenge Museveni’s political hegemony over both parliament and the UPDF.

Allocating parliamentary seats also secures loyalty from younger officers. As ‘Young Turks’ have replaced the old guard, patronage has shifted from rewarding past loyalty to promising future rewards. Critics argue that this shift no longer corresponds to the previous logic. One former army MP and UPDF Commander noted, ‘There was value in having UPDF in parliament, but now it is no longer about representation. It is a reward scheme for officers who scheme for these positions in shows of loyalty to Museveni’.¹⁰¹

This shift is evident in how UPDF MPs are selected. Initially, soldiers were scored by their ‘contribution to the struggle’ (20 percent), ‘educational standard’ (15 percent), ‘general discipline’ (20 percent), ‘ability to communicate’ (20 percent), and ‘political clarity’ (25 percent).¹⁰² Later, the army leadership began providing a shortlist for a secret ballot election overseen by the National Electoral Commission.¹⁰³ Formally, Museveni wields veto power over nominations and amends shortlists.¹⁰⁴ He is also known to informally ‘smuggle in his preferred candidates by mentioning them casually’ and by ‘quietly removing and adding names’.¹⁰⁵ Today, ‘political clarity’—understood as loyalty to Museveni—has become the most valuable currency exchanged for a seat in parliament.¹⁰⁶

None of this is to say that patronage insulates soldiers in parliament from scrutiny. Salim Saleh, Museveni’s brother, was forced to resign after facing allegations of corruption.¹⁰⁷ Above all, there have been consequences for straying from the NRM party line. Mugisha Muntu, after serving in the 5th and 6th Parliaments, withdrew his name for consideration for the 7th after breaking ranks with Museveni.¹⁰⁸ In 2013, General Henry Tumukunde, whose wife is a cousin of Museveni’s wife Janet, was forced to resign from parliament in 2005 after publicly criticizing the removal of presidential term limits and opposing the elimination of secret voting in parliament.¹⁰⁹ Court-martialled and placed under house arrest for 2 years, Tumukunde eventually won an appeal with the Supreme Court but received a ‘serious warning’.¹¹⁰ Such cases demonstrate the dangers of opposing Museveni’s interests, even for those with family ties.¹¹¹

Similarly, in 2005, UPDF MP Colonel Fred Bogere abstained from voting to abolish presidential term limits, believing that it ‘deviated from the aims of the [NRA] struggle’.¹¹² This had immediate consequences, including a public rebuke from Army Commander General Aronda Nyakairima, who called Bogere’s actions tantamount to ‘indiscipline and punishable’.¹¹³ Bogere then faced a public campaign to discredit him. By his own account, he went into hiding before being summoned before the Army Council to receive a reprimand for taking individual decisions.¹¹⁴ When he refused to rescind his abstention, Museveni asserted that his ‘legalistic mentality would be neutralized’, and Bogere was placed on katebe (non-deployment).¹¹⁵ He eventually retired from the UPDF in 2016.

Influence: A constituency of one

Although the NRM dominates Uganda’s legislature, a key role of soldiers in parliament is to put a thumb on the scale of intra-elite bargaining selectively.¹¹⁶ Army MPs are not the only tool to influence a legislature with a two-thirds NRM majority, nor are they used regularly. Former army officers also serve as ex-officio members of parliament, and Museveni’s cabinet is flush with ‘historicals’. However, army MPs can occasionally be deployed alongside other mechanisms to control or co-opt legislators, especially on key matters of regime preservation using normative, remunerative, or coercive resources.

In this way, Uganda’s parliament reflects the paradox of Ugandan politics. While the NRM centralizes control through functioning institutions, it also channels the state’s coercive capacity through a range of actors across society.¹¹⁷ Rebecca Tapscott describes this as ‘institutionalized arbitrariness’, where the sources of coercive power are sometimes obscured, undermining any collective opposition against it.¹¹⁸ Parliament is thus one of several ‘marketplaces’ of influence.¹¹⁹

Influence in this context means placing elites in strategic political positions where they can affect political outcomes regularly and substantially.¹²⁰ As a practical matter, however, army MPs are not constantly exerting influence, despite being charitably described as ‘using the weight of reason’.¹²¹ Army MPs are notorious for chronic absenteeism and poor performance, with few repercussions.¹²² During the 6th Parliament, Ivan Koreta appeared only when there was ‘a need to raise quorum to rush through a second referendum law or a Constitutional Amendment Bill’.¹²³ Upon his expulsion from parliament, Salim Saleh quipped, ‘On the very few occasions I have attended an open session of parliament, I get a headache. This is a pain I would like to avoid’.¹²⁴

Moreover, despite being an ‘interest group’, UPDF MPs do not represent the military as a constituency. Lobbying for military interests is instead handled by UPDF leadership.¹²⁵ Indeed, early army MPs were ‘ordered to stop blowing their mouths off on controversial issues’.¹²⁶ Army MPs have occasionally asked parliament to consider issues salient to the military.¹²⁷ But in most cases, army MPs are not technocrats that might raise military matters. Seldom rising to debate, they are instructed ‘not to come up with any ideas’ lest they risk getting reprimanded by the President.¹²⁸

On its face, 10 additional MPs voting with the President’s party confers only a small numerical advantage. Yet symbolically, the ‘army caucus’—a conspicuous group of uniformed soldiers with their entourages—is also a potent tool of intimidation.¹²⁹ Behind the scenes, lawmakers are sometimes misled into believing that army MPs, who track votes, play a role in determining future cabinet appointments.¹³⁰

When parliament asserts its autonomy, UPDF leadership cautions that it monitors events and will intervene if legislators continue to ‘not show seriousness’ on national issues. The military has also made it clear that it will not allow people with ‘bad politics’ to destabilize Uganda.¹³¹ Museveni has emphasized that the army would not stand idly by if ‘confusion’ emerges in parliament.¹³² Faced with such pressures, one former MP lamented, ‘What can we do? We have the army’.¹³³

Museveni insists that UPDF legislators are ‘conveyor belts for national issues’ and ‘listening posts’ and that their role is to observe parliamentary debates and ‘vote with the NRM’ on key priorities.¹³⁴ The Defence and Internal Affairs Committee is a particular target of intimidation campaigns intended to hinder scrutiny of the defence budget and ensure its passage, with collusion from weak committee Chairs who are always members of the ruling party.¹³⁵

Since 2005, two pivotal moments of constitutional reform have required soldiers in parliament to help whip votes for the President. The first was the 2005 proposal to delete Article 105(2) from the Constitution, which limited presidents to two 5-year presidential terms. Its passing, with 220 votes in favour and 53 against, allowed Museveni to stand for re-election in 2006, undoing years of democratization efforts.¹³⁶ The second key moment came in 2017 when parliament voted to amend Article 102(b), which imposed an age limit of 75 years for presidential candidates.¹³⁷ Despite overwhelming public opposition to removing the age limit,¹³⁸ 317 MPs voted to pass the amendment, with 97 opposing it.¹³⁹

In both cases, UPDF MPs helped the NRM regime carry out a campaign of surveillance, harassment, and subtle intimidation of other MPs. On the term limits issue, Elly Tumwine was instrumental in rallying the UPDF and pressuring NRM MPs to ‘stand together’, arguing ‘it is premature to leave Mzee’(the elder).¹⁴⁰ During the age limit debate, army MPs avoided making formal speeches in parliament and instead led an underground ‘persuasion’ campaign that emphasized the language of ‘sustainability’ and ‘political stability’.¹⁴¹ As one MP recalls, ‘For many of our MPs, receiving a phone call from an army general is considered a privilege and they find it difficult to reject his request to vote a certain way’.¹⁴²

Taken together, these two amendments cleared the way for Museveni to remain in power beyond 2021 and will allow him to stand for re-election through 2031, effectively amounting to a ‘constitutional coup’.¹⁴³ At the time of writing, Museveni, now nearly 80 years old and midway through his sixth term, is signalling his intent to extend presidential terms to 7 years.¹⁴⁴ These episodes illustrate that the UPDF’s role in parliament is to carry out ‘regime survival missions’ rather than representing a broader constituency’.¹⁴⁵

Conclusion

In recent years, at least eight states in the ‘coup belt’ from West Africa to Sudan have experienced destabilizing military intrusions into state politics, marking a startling reversal of a downward trend of coups in Africa.¹⁴⁶ Yet while the coup d’état still looms as a feature of African politics, it is not the only way of thinking about the relationship between military power and political authority on the continent. In some cases, effective management of civil–military relations is measured not by Huntington’s ‘objective civilian control’, but by relative political stability and regime durability achieved through a more integrated mode.

This article has argued that the practice of having soldiers in Uganda’s parliament is rooted in the country’s unique civil–military relations, which view the army as an active participant in politics rather than a bystander. The UPDF’s ‘observation posts’ in the national legislature extend ideological provenance, patronage distribution, and political influence, which act as strategic tools for maintaining the stability and dominance of the NRM regime. The trade-off here is the undermining of parliamentary independence and the corresponding erosion of democratic governance.

Article 210 of Uganda’s Constitution empowers parliament to oversee the country’s military and to play a role in defence sector policymaking. Surprisingly, legislative oversight of Uganda’s security sector has sometimes been effective.¹⁴⁷ But the perennial question is how parliament can hold the military accountable when it includes senior military officers.¹⁴⁸ As a former army MP noted, ‘Parliament is only one place of many where this occurs’,¹⁴⁹ an observation supported by recent scholarship on Uganda’s autocratic turn.¹⁵⁰ Most recently, Museveni has solidified his grip on Uganda’s military leadership by promoting his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba to army chief, which corresponds to ongoing speculation that he is next in line for the presidency.¹⁵¹ ‘Given Uganda’s history’, the implications of such actions for civil–military relations and democracy may be difficult to overcome. Yet, there remains a temptation to attribute political instability in African states to military intrusions into state politics that are considered aberrations of Huntington’s ideal type of ‘objective civilian control’. Moving forward, observers should consider cases such as Uganda, where the patchy institutionalization of democratic practices has nevertheless unfolded alongside a high level of regime durability owed largely to the fusion of political authority and military power that plays out in sites that include the national legislature.

Footnotes

Author notes