Paper long abstract:

The recent presidential and parliamentary elections in Uganda, like most post-independence elections which have preceded it, were conducted in a storm of controversy, tension and disputed levels of legitimacy. They constituted only the third set of multiparty elections in Uganda's history, the first being in 1962 immediately before independence, and the second in 1980, which precipitated a five-year long civil war. There was no shortage of evidence indicating a variety of rigging systems, electoral fraud and intimidation on a substantial scale. Despite this, the election results have been upheld by foreign governments, some observers and the national judiciary, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, as legally binding. This apparent contradiction lies at the heart of what this paper sets out to explore, begging the question of what elections in Uganda actually represent. It is argued that the very conduct of a multiparty election is viewed as being a sufficient criterion in itself for rendering legitimacy to the political process, provided that two key political boundaries have not been violated. The first is that of domestic unease. A government may be unpopular, indulge in electoral malpractices and yet still not have stirred up a sufficient mass of domestic dissent to precipitate physical rebellion. The second refers to the positive state of an incumbent's relations with foreign governments and institutions. Neither of these boundaries had been crossed at the time of the February elections.

Given this, we are prompted to ask what precisely it is about elections that afford political legitimacy to a victorious incumbent. We might assume that the answer lies with electoral structures and procedures with which we are all familiar - polling stations, an electoral commission, an electoral register, voter cards, counting procedures and suchlike. All of these criteria however, were violated to greater or lesser degrees in the recent elections. Such violations were overshadowed by maintaining the integrity of our two boundaries which preclude domestic and foreign protest and political action on any significant level.

But this stark political reality cannot comprise in itself the substance of electoral discourse. The breach is rather filled by contentions and apologies associated with liberal notions of political evolution, reformism and democratisation. In the recent February elections these took the notional form of democracy-through-multipartyism. Until July 2005 Museveni had presided over a 'no-party' system which was a one-party state in all but name. Increasing domestic and foreign unease at his continued authoritarianism prompted him to hold a referendum (which resulted in a pro-multiparty vote) and the subsequent February multiparty elections, in an attempt to forestall domestic instability and donor sanctions. In the recent elections then, the key legitimising factor which has served to undercut increasing domestic and foreign unease was the holding of multiparty elections for the first time in 26 years. The very act of engaging in a process of multiparty elections conferred a degree of political legitimacy that transcended the illegitimacies arising from multiple manifestations of electoral fraud and the numerous historical injustices that have occurred under his tenure. This has served to make it more difficult for elements of the opposition to resort to more familiar means of removing an intransigent incumbent. It has also pandered to Western liberal notions of multiparty elections as being a first step towards 'procedural' democracy, which is, we are told, itself a precursor towards 'substantive' democracy.