New York -- Uganda’s biggest challenge is to "institutionalize a pluralistic political system," Ned McMahon, dean’s professor of applied politics at the State University of Binghamton told The Monitor.

McMahon writes country reports on political rights and civil liberties in approximately a dozen countries in Eastern and Southern Africa for Freedom House, a U.S. NGO. He wrote his last report at the end of 2000, and he will soon begin working on the 2001 report on Uganda.

McMahon pointed to the fate of the Political Organisations Bill 2001 as an example of a setback for pluralistic democracy in Uganda. In February, Parliament passed the bill which would allow political organisations to open up branches at district levels but not below. The bill kept in place many other restrictions on political parties that have been in place since the ascent of the current Movement government in1986. Nonetheless, President Yoweri Museveni rejected the bill in April, and it has been tabled since then. Samia Bugwe North MP Aggrey Awori said last month that Parliament should revisit the bill before dealing with the Suppression of Terrorism Bill.

The recently proposed NGO Amendment Bill, which would impose further restrictions on NGOs, is also a concern, McMahon said. Amnesty International has urged Parliament to reject the bill. "One of the areas where Uganda had been doing relatively well had been allowing civil society to play its role," said McMahon. "This NGO bill is of considerable concern, given the greater level of oversight that would occur."

While McMahon said he could not know the motivation behind the bill, he did say that it "has the effect of scaring people off," and he added, "it could well be that is an intended effect."

In his report on Uganda last year for Freedom House, McMahon wrote that "manipulation and exploitation of ethnic divisions pose a serious threat to peace in Uganda." He explained to The Monitor that he did not see this as a short-term or even medium-term threat to peace.

However, "These issues are not really being resolved really," McMahon said. "I think they should be resolved in the context of respect for freedom of association and the ability for political parties to be able to express their views and articulate them." In response to fears that this would lead to the formation of political parties along ethnic or regional lines, McMahon said that one option some countries have taken is to require political parties to have some sort of national characteristic.

Whatever the eventual resolution, McMahon urged Uganda to discuss these issues openly. "The first thing Uganda needs is to have to have a dialogue on this, and to have a mechanism that people have faith in and has credibility," he said. "It has to be mechanism set up by some sort of common negotiation."

McMahon, who writes the annual Freedom House reports on many of Uganda’s neighbors, says Uganda is roughly equal to its neighbors in political freedoms and liberties. He considers the likelihood of an alternate being elected to be a useful proxy indicator, and he said that outcome, in both Kenya and Uganda, is "quite implausible." Kizza Besigye lost to Museveni in a March presidential election that some observers said was tainted by violence and poll rigging.