By Joshua Mabonga
Just as good is the opposite of evil and white the opposite of black, Injustice is the absence of justice, where rights of other people are violated, and unfair treatment of people is exercised.
Justice is a point of equity in between that equals the two extremes involved. Injustice, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of justice. Justice promotes peaceful co-existence of people from different divisions of life,
In a nutshell, justice and injustice cannot co-exist in the same place, and this could be the reason why President Yoweri Museveni has defended proposal to scrap bail for capital offenders in a tight view to promoting injustices to victims of capital offenders like murder.
The Lord said in the books of Proverbs 14:31 that; “Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honors him.”
President Museveni is on record to have maintained a hard grip backing the proposal on behalf of the government to ensure that justice is delivered; citizens are protected by having capital offenders not released on bail before justice is delivered to the victims.
This proposal aims at barring capital offenders from being lynched by the aggrieved victims of their actions, facilitate uninterrupted judicial procedures in the quest to deliver justice and also protect the victims from further wraths from the suspects.
On Sunday, Dec 12th, 2021, I read with a dozen astonishment an article published in the media, titled; “Museveni is not immune to the injustices he is trying to create.”
This was authored by Philip Matogo, a senior journalist and a media personality with RX radio hailing from Kabale district.
What shocked me was not the blackmailing content but what became of a fairly trained Journalist to stay blind and glorify injustices being inflicted on the local persons who are always the capital offenses.
It should be noted that the current constitution was brought into force by the NRM government, a direct initiative to restore justice in the country.
President Museveni as the head of government is always overwhelmed with victims of capital offenders knocking at his doors to seek for justice since these people are often granted bail by the court even before the case is concluded.
A case in point is of Mathew Kirabo a self-confessed of his girlfriend Desire Mirembe who was charged in the Jinja Magistrates Court with murder before being remanded. He was later granted bail on November 24, 2016 and has since disappeared.
Recently, Judge Henry Kaweesa of the Mukono High Court tasked the sureties, to present Kirabo or face jail, and pay shs 50 million each.
On Wednesday 17, 2021, the accused was supposed to appear before court, they did not show up but instead Mathew Kirabo’s rich parents paid out a total of shs 150 million and the sureties were let off the hook.
This is the injustice President Museveni is talking about. The family of Mirembe deserve justice too.
Whereas this proposal has continued to register endless support from all walks of life, some people have remained critical against claiming it’s a move to oppress some section of political affiliates with divergent views against NRM.
This is not right, there is no law which is made for an individual, and this law is purely to promote justice in our society. It’s not just wrong to politicize the proposal but quite outrageous.
Does justice simply mean that someone is dealt with as they deserve according to the law? What if law itself creates injustice? One way in which law might cause injustice is if it treats minority groups less favorably than the majority or fails to protect them against disadvantage they experience in society. This is an issue that our law makers and political commentators must look at without using political lenses.
