Dr. Olara Otunnu’s bid to become the next United Nations Secretary-General (SG) has run into a potentially damaging challenge, with a former Ugandan diplomat now asking the UN Security Council to critically examine Otunnu’s record during the bloody 1985-1986 political crisis in Uganda.
In a hard-hitting memorandum submitted to members of the UN Security Council, Henry Venekenti Baisi, who served as a Third Secretary at Uganda’s diplomatic mission during the period, argues that Otunnu’s record as Foreign Affairs Minister raises serious questions about whether he possesses the judgement and conflict-resolution credentials required to occupy the UN’s top diplomatic office.
Baisi’s attack is built around one uncomfortable question, of what exactly did Otunnu achieve when he had executive responsibility at a time when Uganda desperately needed peace?
Otunnu became Foreign Affairs Minister in July 1985 following the overthrow of President Milton Obote and subsequently became the principal international face of the Tito Okello government.
He was therefore not, according to Baisi, some ordinary minister watching events from the sidelines, but the government’s chief diplomat, principal foreign policy adviser and the person expected to represent the country before the international community at a time when Uganda was engulfed in armed conflict.
And it is here that Baisi says Olala Otunnu’s record deserves uncomfortable scrutiny.
“His defining responsibility was to help bring Uganda’s civil war to an end,” the diplomat says in the memorandum, adding that instead, the opposite occurred.
Baisi welcoming M7 on his first visit to address African Heads of state summit @Addis Ababa in 1986
The Nairobi peace negotiations collapsed, the Okello government eventually fell in January 1986 and the retreating army disintegrated, with the country subsequently descending into another prolonged period of armed conflict.
For Baisi, these are not merely historical events to be buried in Uganda’s past, but they go directly to the question of whether Otunnu should now be entrusted with the responsibility of leading the UN at a time when the world is facing wars, humanitarian crises and complicated international conflicts.
Baisi therefore challenges the Security Council to answer a question that could prove particularly uncomfortable for Otunnu and his backers, including president YK Museveni.
“What evidence from Ambassador Otunnu’s record demonstrates exceptional judgement in conflict resolution?”
Baisi says his own experience as a Ugandan diplomat during the period left him repeatedly having to face African diplomats demanding explanations over reports of children in the Luwero Triangle being killed by government forces, describing those encounters as some of the most painful moments of his diplomatic career. He said he was left defending a government whose actions had generated profound concern among fellow African states.
And although Baisi accepts that a Foreign Affairs Minister does not personally command troops on the battlefield, he rejects the argument that a senior minister like Otunnu (then) can simply wash his hands of the conduct and failures of the government he serves.
“When peace negotiations fail, when civilian confidence collapses, when the country’s international reputation deteriorates, when diplomacy fails to prevent continued violence,” Baisi argues, those outcomes inevitably become part of the record of the government’s senior leadership.
The memorandum then moves away from diplomatic language and puts human suffering at the centre of the argument, with Baisi citing the case of Kayondo Sendi, then a senior UN official in Addis Ababa, who had supported Uganda’s liberation struggle while working at UNECA.
According to the account, after Museveni and the National Resistance Army (NRA) took power, Sendi was invited to return home and serve as Minister of State for Economic Planning.
But before accepting the appointment, he travelled to Luwero to see his parents.
What he allegedly found, according to Baisi, were two bullet-ridden skeletons.
He could not tell which remains belonged to his father and which belonged to his mother.
He buried them and reportedly declined the ministerial appointment because he did not know who had killed them or what cause he had actually supported.
Baisi says Sendi’s story was only one example of the suffering experienced by thousands of Ugandan families during the conflict, futher bringing the matter closer to home, recounting the death of his father-in-law, Eston John Lyavala Lwanga, whom he says was beaten to death by retreating soldiers in front of his three-year-old son during the collapse of the Okello government.
These accounts, Baisi argues, demonstrate why the Security Council should not reduce the UN Secretary-General appointment to a contest of academic credentials, eloquence and diplomatic connections, because according to him, the office requires demonstrated judgement when lives are at stake.
And this is where the memorandum delivers its strongest challenge to Otunnu’s candidature.
“What did Ambassador Olara Otunnu demonstrably achieve, during his tenure as Uganda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, to stop the killing of civilians, protect children, resolve the conflict, or secure a durable peace?”
Baisi says if convincing answers exist, they should be placed before the Security Council, and if they don't, he argues, the Council must seriously consider whether Otunnu’s record from 1985–1986 is compatible with the standards expected of the person who would become the world’s highest-ranking diplomat.
