Question

Why should a constitution be written as per the will and aspiration of people?write three reasons

Answer 1

Aris­to­tle the philoso­pher who lived be­tween 384 – 322 BC de­fined the word “Con­sti­tu­tion” as: the fun­da­men­tal law, writ­ten or un­writ­ten, that es­tab­lishes the char­ac­ter of a gov­ern­ment by defin­ing the ba­sic prin­ci­ples to which a so­ci­ety must con­form; by de­scrib­ing the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the gov­ern­ment and reg­u­la­tion, dis­tri­b­u­tion, and lim­i­ta­tion on the func­tions of dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment de­part­ments; and by pre­scrib­ing the ex­tent and man­ner of the ex­er­cise of its sov­er­eign power. [1]

Uganda-ConstitutionA copy of the 1995 Uganda Constitution

Among the qual­i­ties a good con­sti­tu­tion is that it should not be eas­ily changed, but most im­por­tantly, should bear the as­pi­ra­tions of the peo­ple it is in­tended to gov­ern. With a his­tory of con­flict and hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions right from colo­nial times where ex­ten­sive mea­sures of op­pres­sion used to sup­press dis­con­tent and deny Ugan­dans their fun­da­men­tal hu­man rights, the 1995 Con­sti­tu­tion of the re­pub­lic of Uganda was pro­mul­gated, ex­press­ing com­mit­ment of the peo­ple of Uganda to build­ing a bet­ter fu­ture by es­tab­lish­ing a so­cio – eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal or­der through a pop­u­lar and durable na­tional Con­sti­tu­tion based on the prin­ci­ples of unity, peace, equal­ity, democ­racy, free­dom, so­cial jus­tice and progress. Against this back­ground, through the Con­stituent As­sem­bly, the 1995 Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Uganda was adopted on the 22nd Sep­tem­ber 1995.

Since its pro­mul­ga­tion, the 1995 Con­sti­tu­tion has been amended three times, with the first amend­ment of 1st Sep­tem­ber 2000 be­ing suc­cess­fully chal­lenged in the Supreme Court case of Sse­mogerere and Oth­ers – vs – At­tor­ney Gen­eral, Con­sti­tu­tional Ap­peal No.1 of 2002, with Court ob­serv­ing that the amend­ment was in­con­sis­tent with Ar­ti­cle 88 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which pro­vides for the quo­rum of Par­lia­ment when vot­ing on any ques­tion.

The sec­ond amend­ment was the Con­sti­tu­tional (Amend­ment) Act, 2005, Act No.11 of 2005, which among oth­ers, saw the re­moval of term lim­its on the tenure of the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, cre­ation of anti-cor­rup­tion court, cre­ation of the of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Deputy At­tor­ney Gen­eral, and the hold­ing of the ref­er­en­dum.

The third amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the re­pub­lic of Uganda was the Con­sti­tu­tional (Amend­ment) (No.2) Act, 2005, No.21 of 2005, whose ob­jec­tives were to pro­vide for Kam­pala Cap­i­tal City, cre­ation of re­gional gov­ern­ments as the high­est po­lit­i­cal au­thor­ity in the re­gions, and to pro­vide for new dis­tricts of Uganda among oth­ers.

The 1995 Con­sti­tu­tion of the Re­pub­lic of Uganda is one of the largely flex­i­ble con­sti­tu­tions, which is why in a pe­riod of 19 years, it has so far been amended three times, with the first be­ing suc­cess­fully chal­lenged in Court. The Con­sti­tu­tional Amend­ment Bill 2015 will be the fourth time, an at­tempt is made to amend the con­sti­tu­tion, and third if suc­cess­ful.