TROUBLE IN PARADISE! SURPRISE!

This week it has been reported that inside the National Unity Platform (NUP) there are serious differences of opinion about how they should operate in view of their pledge to remove the government of President Yoweri Museveni.

The radical wing of the party think their MPs are being too diplomatic in pushing the main agenda of regime change, the MPs on their part have deflected the charges by asking for accountability for the funds they contribute from their salaries to headquarters.

NUP are understandably unamused that their dirty linen is being washed in public.

But it shouldn’t be a surprise. The party which is not even five years old was cobbled together quickly to contest last year’s elections. In the process it accepted defectors from other parties, many of whom had read the tea leaves and knew the new party led by Robert Kyagulanyi, would shake up the electoral map, especially in central Uganda....

Immediately you can see how people of different ambitions opportunistically took advantage of NUP to get into the house. Now the dust from the elections has settled down, elections have been won or lost and the glue – if any, that was supposed to hold NUP together is beginning to be questioned, coming unstuck.

 NUP uprooted the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) as the leading opposition party in parliament. Immediately almost 60 of their members find themselves in the parliament. Improved incomes aside, they have quickly found out there is a country to run, they are discussing issues of national importance, regardless of their opposition to the NRM.

Several members of NUP are presently in detention and it can be argued that the MPs could have made it more of an issue in parliament. But that would be to ignore parliamentary procedure.

This honeymoon is clearly over and the party needs to do some soul searching and find their mission beyond overthrowing the Museveni government, in order to keep everyone on track.

In terms of its long term survival the worst thing that happened to NUP was the quick success they enjoyed in the last polls, where they flushed out the ruling NRM’s candidates from central Uganda.

Long term success in any enterprise – political or economic depends on how strong the vision is and how widely it is embraced by the membership. This is important because it is this intangible that will determine whether an organization will get up again after its first, second, third, nth failures. These failures and recovering from them are important in strengthening the appreciation of the vision. In effect you need these failures to strengthen the party’s resolve.

"So you can see how the quick success is a problem. The party’s mettle has not been tested. They have not had to come together and rally against seemingly insurmountable odds, not for one day or week or even year but for a long time...

It’s like the Jewish nation it is the travails they have suffered over millennia -- wandering in the desert for 40 years with Moses, being expelled from the homeland and more recently the holocaust, that have forged the will of that nation.

NUP’s youthfulness, while a breath of fresh air may very well be their undoing. They are going to suffer these internal feuding and differences of opinion in full public view, which is unfortunate for them, but there are no shortcuts.

Of course you can expect that their rivals – both inside and outside the opposition are glad to perpetuate this dissension in their ranks. Those are the hazards of the trade.

Whether they can hold themselves together will depend on the quality of the leadership. It is this kind of adversity that separates the boys from the men, that will either make or break NUP. And inconceivable as it sounds if they fail to handle the situation they may very not be a factor in 2026, even though their grievances will still be there.