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President Museveni Has to Speak Out On Kayiira

The Monitor (Kampala)
EDITORIAL
January 16, 2007
Posted to the web January 16, 2007
Kampala
President Yoweri Museveni is in an excellent position to extricate the army
from the growing and damaging public perception that some of its senior
officers assassinated Dr Andrew Lutakoome Kayiira, leader of the Uganda Freedom
Movement in March 1987.
How can he do this? One option lies in directly addressing the nation on this
matter which has now taken on a life of its own.
There are two alleged reports available whose custodians each claim they are
the genuine article. They are supposed to have been written by investigators
from the Scotland Yard who were paid $ 250,000 to conduct an independent
investigation.
Daily MONITOR has reproduced one version in full after it was first published
in 1997. And yesterday, we published extensive excerpts from the version in the
possession of the Democratic Party (DP). As would be expected, the latter
tended to confirm growing public belief that the perpetrators of the murder
were soldiers working under orders from high office.
It is important for the president to speak out now since a new and disturbing
aspect has been introduced to the whole saga by the DP. The party says the 1997
version, which was initially carried in the defunct Uganda Confidential
newsletter, was doctored. They say that their version was leaked to them by a
whistleblower in military intelligence who claims he was part of the team that
allegedly doctored the Scotland Yard document.
Note that this was one year after Dr Paul Ssemogerere (then leader of the DP)
had told citizens during his whirlwind presidential election bid that there was
something fishy about the whole Kayiira report.
As matters now stand, for any reasonable person, this 20-year silence on the
part of the government fuels speculation that the report implicates officers of
the army, and by extension the government itself.
The high standards expected of any president require him in this case to tell
Ugandans what he saw in the report which was handed over to his government by
Scotland Yard. Forget that ridiculous tale from the Internal Affairs minister
that the document has vanished without a trace.
The president could also burnish the reputation of the government if he
explained the reasons behind this 20-year blackout. The vacuum caused by the
silence is fertile ground for all sorts of imagination, conjecture and
mischief.


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