NORBERT MAO: AND THEN THERE WAS ONE

A deal between the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the Democratic Party (DP) received a mooted reaction from public. There was some initial surprise, even shock at the development, but that soon passed and we went back to our business.

Anyone who has followed the progression of the NRM over the last three decades was not surprised.

When the NRA took over Kampala in 1986, it showed itself to be a superior military force to the national army. But the NRM was politically weak.  President Yoweri Museveni while using the NRA to come to power recognized that to sustain his project he needed national political buy-in.

"Suspending the party activity of the traditional parties and coopting some of its leading lights, at once froze political parties in place, while strengthening the NRM politically. Ten years down the line and the first presidential election – where Museveni beat DP’s president Paul Ssemogerere in 1996, proved the success of this route....

The return to multi-party democracy in time for the 2006 presidential polls, came from external rather than internal pressure, a concession Museveni had to make to cause the lifting of presidential term limits. In case we had forgotten, the 1995 constitution had restricted the presidency to two five-year terms. It was thought by opening up parties would now gain traction and offer a more competitive political playing field.

But the party inactivity had taken its toll. The old leaders wanted to hang on, yet a younger cadre who thought their time had come, were banging incessantly at the door, demanding a place at the table. the infighting meant parties could not muster any credible challenge against a more organized and better resourced NRM. It did not help that opposition parties were seduced to adopt a big man model and forgot or ignored to build party structures and invest in the coherence of their organisations.

New parties fell away as soon as they sprouted, while the older parties were really just keeping up appearances, failing to make an impression in presidential elections or in terms of parliamentary seats.

The writing was really on the wall as far back as 2011, the last time DP and the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) together fielded a presidential candidate. In that year Norbert Mao and Olara Otunnu were the flag bearers for DP and UPC. Between them they failed to win five percent of the presidential vote.

Mao run in 2021, but his campaign (0.56 percent) was overshadowed by the new energy of the National Unity Party (NUP), which crashed the party relegating even FDC to a distant third. NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi won 35.08 of the votes to FDC Patrick Amuriat’s 3.26 percent.

We are wiser in hindsight of course.

"We have known all this intuitively, which explains the mooted response to the DP capitulation. The only cognitive discordance was caused by Mao in his speech at the event, repeatedly lauding Museveni’s courage in signing the agreement with DP. Less charitable people would have questioned Mao’s courage, bordering on shamelessness, in selling the party down the river....

More forgiving people will understand that DP is succumbing to the inevitable. DP’s glory days were in 1961, when it won the general election under Benedicto Kiwanuka. Ninety five percent of Ugandans were not born by then.

We want a credible opposition. Any country does. A good opposition keeps government in check. Governments that are left to their own devices tend to veer towards impunity and corruption. But opposition parties all over the world, even in the older democracies know that their place is not guaranteed, they have to fight to claim it. Any laws on the books that protect the opposition in more developed democracies were won through patience, perseverance, sweat and blood.

The ruling houses of Europe, whose kings had absolute power over the land and people, conceded these powers reluctantly. Those who did not read the signs, had their heads loped off and their bloodlines obliterated.

Given the obvious advantages of the ruling parties, the opposition parties have to invest in building structures to counter them. Any party that is not investing in that, will only last as long as the novelty factor of its new leader.

It’s a class the opposition will continue to take until they learn the lesson.