A new Bill that imposes severe restrictions on political gatherings in Uganda will be challenged in the Constitutional Court as soon as President Yoweri Museveni signs it into law, civil society organisations have warned.

Ruling party MPs from National Resistance Movement (NRM) used their majority to pass the controversial and unpopular Public Order Management Bill in a chaotic parliamentary session in Kampala on August 6, but the fight is now expected to head to the courts.

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“We will go to the Constitutional Court and get decisions that we shall use to advance our cause, whether it will be in our favour or not,” Dr Livingstone Sewanyana, the executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, told The EastAfrican.

“But we shall not stop there; we shall go to the Supreme Court of Uganda and move to the East African Court of Justice and use other avenues.”

Supporters of the Bill say it allows the police to protect citizens from civil unrest and other disruptive gatherings.

However, critics say the new law infringes on constitutional provisions guaranteeing the right of assembly, association and expression. They say the law will be used to quell political dissent.

Restriction on space

In a statement released after it was passed, Human Rights Watch described the Bill as “Uganda’s latest restriction on space for expressing dissent and critiquing governance, which has been slowly eroded over the past few years.”

Human rights groups and activists have expressed concern over the restriction of civil liberties in Uganda in recent years, including the brutal and repeated arrests of opposition politicians, the closure of media houses, and the violent breaking-up of public demonstrations.

If passed into law, any meeting of three or more persons will require police clearance.

In addition, meeting conveners will be expected to notify the police three days in advance if the meeting is to discuss issues of governance and government policies.

The human-rights organisation said a clause in the Bill allowing the police to use disproportionate force, including the use of firearms, regardless of the alleged offence, contravenes international law.

“This is particularly troubling given Uganda’s recent history of security forces shooting and killing protestors and bystanders at demonstrations,” the group said in a statement.

“In 2009, Human Rights Watch investigations and hospital records indicated that at least 40 people were killed by security forces over two days. In 2011, nine people were killed, including a two-year-old girl, during protests over rising food and fuel prices.

"No member of the police or military has faced criminal punishment for those killings, despite demands for investigations from civil society and victim’s families.”

President Museveni has 30 days in which to assent to the Bill or return it to the House and there were conflicting reports of the status of the draft law by press time.

Helen Kaweesa, parliament’s spokeswoman, said the Bill had been forwarded to the president but Ofwono Opondo, the government spokesman, said the controversial Bill was still with parliament and had not been received by State House.

Civil society organisations and political activists are gearing up for a legal and political battle.

“We have not yet instructed a law firm to move the court process forward because we have to be sure that the president has signed the Bill,” said Mr Ssewanyana, adding:

“However, we have a number of organisations interested in joining the court process and we shall make a joint petition as soon as the Bill is assented to.”

Prof Frederick Sempebwa, a legal scholar who led Uganda’s last Constitutional Review Commission, told The EastAfrican the law could be struck down in court.

Possible success

“There is a possibility of success at the Constitutional Court because it is a new law that has just been enacted,” he said. “The petitioners will be saying that the new law is unconstitutional and the court can nullify those provisions that are offending.”

Nicolas Opiyo, the secretary of the Uganda Law Society, said the Bill was trying to reintroduce clauses struck out of the Police Act in 2005 for violating the Constitution.

Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a senior history lecturer at Makerere University said: “The intention of the law is regime entrenchment because it wants to prevent public protests in respect to term limits,” adding: “But they may not achieve that because the law will radicalise the opposition, who will now have legitimacy because there is a definite reason to protest.”

The streets of the capital Kampala have been a theatre of conflict between the police and political dissidents led by opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye since late 2005 and, more intensely, over the past two years during the Walk to Work protests against the rising cost of living and government incompetence.

There have also been “Black Monday” protests against corruption by civil society organisations, protests against power cuts and high taxes by traders, and last week, a new protest by women from the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) against increased taxes on paraffin and water.

Beatrice Anywar, the shadow energy minister in FDC, warned that dissidence would now be expanded to include protests against the Bill.

“We have already made it clear that we are going to challenge that law in court because it is unconstitutional and it infringes on the rights of Ugandans,” she said. “We shall also be taking the political route.

The controversy over the Bill and its implications for civil liberties is likely to spill over into the rest of the East African Community, especially as member states plan to accelerate talks on a political federation at the next Heads of State summit in November.

Critics are expected to argue that the Bill and recent governance challenges in Uganda fall foul of one of the fundamental principles of the EAC Treaty, which calls for “good governance, including adherence to the principles of democracy, the rule of law, accountability, transparency, social justice, equal opportunities, gender equality, as well as the recognition, promotion and protection of human and peoples’ rights in accordance with the provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.”