Lawyers for opposition leader Kizza Besigye led by Kenyan counsel Martha Karua and Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago gather outside the General Court Martial in Makindye, Uganda on December 2, 2024. Ms Karua was denied a licence to practise law in Uganda.
The simmering conflict between the Uganda Law Council and the Law Society of Kenya over the former’s denial of a temporary certificate of practice to allow Senior Counsel Martha Karua to represent her client in Uganda, opposition leader Kizza Besigye, exposes the soft underbelly of the East African Community and the potential fault lines that could once again scuttle the regional integration project.
Ms Karua had applied to practise in Uganda after retired colonel and political figure Besigye appointed her to lead his defence against charges of illegal possession of firearms that he is facing alongside a colleague, Hajji Obeid Lutale, before the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces Court Martial.
Besigye and Lutale were abducted from Nairobi on November 16 before the charges were slapped on them on November 20.
In the letter notifying Karua of denial of licence to practise in Uganda, the law council states, among other reasons, that the documents supporting her application had not been notarised, and that her academic and nationality documents were not attached to the application.
The council goes further to suggest that she brought no unique skills to the case and that her bid to appear for Besigye was politically motivated.
One could argue that, in clerical terms, the missing documents were a vital omission on Karua’s part. The question, though, is whether this was an incurable defect and rejection of the application was the only option available to the law council.
By ignoring Dr Besigye’s constitutional right to be represented by the legal counsel of his choice and imputing political motive to Karua’s efforts to represent him, the council clearly went beyond its remit and put its own independence from political control into question.
The ULC’s stance also reflects the widespread problem of poor role perception by public institutions and their leaders. For instance, is the ULC supposed to facilitate or obstruct aspirations for justice? If the commissioners were to discharge their mandate better, they might have been inclined to ask Karua to cure the listed defects in her application for temporary practice, rather than summarily dismissing it.
On the other hand, the resulting standoff with the Law Society of Kenya and its threat to initiate a process to bar Ugandan lawyers from practising in Kenya should be seen as more gratuitous than fortuitous.
The LSK’s move shines the light on the flagrant abuse and disregard for the protocols of EAC and the need to cure it. If member states really value regional integration, they should prevail on Uganda and other member states to live by the word and spirit of the protocols governing regional cooperation.
In the present circumstances, Kampala’s mischief exposes gaps that should be reinforced and supplemented with robust policy frameworks. It also raises harrowing fears about the intermittent push for a political federation.
The shortfalls and contradictions in the EAC protocols and policy framework should not be surprising. They reflect the dominant thinking at the time they were being formulated.
Mostly autocratic or reluctant democrats, the champions of the revival of EAC were conflicted between the liberal philosophy behind cooperation and their instinct for control.
That is why they propped up the economic agenda while keeping people’s rights on the backburner. LSK’s challenge to Uganda’s actions, therefore, goes beyond the immediate case and should be the springboard to meaning revision of the EAC Treaty and its protocols.
