Worst idea of the week

How's this for a nifty idea: give the military courts jurisdiction over civil cases? Excerpt from George Mangula from Eagle Online:

The UPDF has also played an important legal role by prosecuting its own officers and civilians involved in armed robbery, terrorism and related acts. I see no wrong therefore that the military should help handle some civil cases since the institution has qualified legal personnel.

It is amazing that using little resources, the UPDF General Military Court Martial handles its work better than the conventional courts in Uganda. The military court is cognizant of time in case dispensation but also issues of corruption cannot be mentioned here. We have had judicial officers in conventional courts arrested for taking bribes to defeat justice, the same has not happened in the General Court Martial system.

That is why I urge policy makers to allocate UPDF a bigger role in the national judicial system so that they help poor Ugandans get justice in the shortest time possible, moreover at a cheaper cost. The process in normal courts is so tedious and unfair to the poor Ugandans who form the majority of the country’s population, now estimated to be about 40 million people. Yet those who run the conventional judicial system in the country are doing less to address the challenges that the poor face in courts, despite the pledges the judiciary makes every year to speed up court processes.

There is evidence that simple cases which should have been resolved within a month or two have taken over 10 years, just because some judicial officers in connivance with lawyers representing both parties want to continue benefiting financially from those cases at the disadvantage of poor Ugandans. This could also explain why a backlog of cases still exists within the conventional courts, despite the usual complaints that the courts are understaffed and its officials underpaid.

Good grief.