Last week we went to the polls to vote in the much anticipated presidential and parliamentary elections.
President Yoweri Museveni won another term in office and his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party maintained its dominance in parliament capturing about 62 percent of the seats in the house.
Neophytes the National Unity Platform (NUP) crashed the party to win the most seats of any opposition party, 61, with most of its victories at the expense of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and Democratic Party (DP).
There are many lessons from the just concluded polls for both sides of the divide.
For the NRM the blood bath in Central region, with not a single minister from the region returning to the house, has to be a wake up call. While the NRM can shrug these losses off because of their dominance in parliament, the strategists at Kyadondo road must be wondering whether this can be replicated in other regions in the future or not.
"We have always known there is discontent with the NRM’s coming to four decade long stay in power – otherwise NRM would be showing 90 percent landslides, what is clear now is that the much touted demographic shift has happened...Eighty percent of the population are below the age of 35, and therefore can not relate to the dark days of Uganda’s recent past. Whatever progress has been made is the baseline against which they measure progress, and for them progress is not happening fast enough.
To beat off (forgive the pun!) the opposition, government has to keep the economy growing but more than that, they need to distribute this growth more equitably through continual improvement of the business environment, while improving education and health services, so that Ugandans can take advantage of the improved business environment.
The NRM has done it before – reinvent itself after every election, there is no reason to believe they can not any more, especially when many of its ministers, 25, were shown the door in the election.
"The overwhelming victory in central Uganda while not to be snorted at, may very well be a poisoned chalice for NUP....
The barely six month party will now be held to a higher standard than before. The suggestion that they can be real challengers to the throne, mean the public will be looking beyond the romanticism of their red berets to expect much more deliberate and constructive opposition to government. Failure to do this may see them dismissed as a circus that the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in South Africa now are.
Also the pressure on them is going to be whether they can build into a party with a more national character. As it is now they are susceptible to being portrayed and isolated as a parochial party.
And finally how NUP engages with other opposition parties in the house will be key to the above. NUP may decide to keep all the juicy positions in the committees and parliamentary commission for themselves, alienating the other parties, especially their older dogs who have become accustomed to being the chairs of the key committees in the house.
To be magnanimous and spread out the goodies among the opposition is going to be a tall order. The NUP rank and file will argue they have suffered disproportionately to get to the house and deserve everything they can get their hands on.
"It will be interesting to see whether NUP leader Robert Kyagulanyi has the political sleight of hand to juggle these competing interests to not only bring the opposition together, at least in the house but more importantly to sustain his party’s momentum for the next five years....
In coming years all eyes will be on NUP if only because of their novelty. But it will also be interesting to see how the old in the tooth NRM responds to this new dynamic.
An old Chinese saying springs to mind, “May you live in interesting times.”
