President Museveni has urged judges to desist from giving criminals lenient punishments, which he said are responsible for the surge in crime.
The President was speaking at the annual judges’ conference in Kampala on Monday.
“For us in our societies we believe in the law of Moses, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, if you interfere with that you will see the instability you will cause here. In fact, I have been making a mistake of not signing death sentences but I am now repenting completely from that mistake,” President Museveni said.
He also blamed the judiciary for the case backlog, arguing that the judges are not giving priority to serious cases, especially those involving loss of lives.
“If there is to be backlog, let it be about divorce and those small things. What destabilises society is life, because once life is lost and there are no answers, people become afraid,” he said.
Museveni also slammed the judiciary for giving a lenient sentence to butchers who were convicted for using medicine for dead bodies (formalin) in preserving meat. He said the 8 months given to the convicts was not satisfactory, he would instead prefer two decades in jail.
“There are those putting medicine for dead bodies (formalin) in meat, this is so shaming actually, but the judge only gave them 8 months! If it were up to me, it should have been about 20 years,” Museveni said.
Last week while speaking at the ceremony to pass out of over 900 prisons officers at the Prisons Academy and Training School ground in Luzira, Museveni said criminals are now taking it for granted that they cannot be hanged and continue to misbehave, a thing he said should stop.
“If you see how they (criminals) kill our people, they need some lesson. The way we have been doing, they think we are lenient,” Museveni said.
