Two years to the ballot: How prepared is the Opposition?

With the 2016 polls less than two years away, Opposition political parties appear to be blowing hot and cold – unsettled on which strategy to employ, passing the baton to the incumbent President Museveni who seems to have taken the initiative by launching early campaign jaunts in the countryside.

In 2014, the major activity within the Opposition has been the countrywide working tours, ostensibly to drum up support for a raft of electoral reforms they insist are a prerequisite if the 2016 elections are to be free and fair. There are also still making baby steps towards on-and-off plan for a coalition.

The by-election in Luweero District where they coalesced around the Democratic Party (DP) candidate Brenda Nabukenya to secure victory was an example of how well things could turn out if they really put their minds to it.

Mr Museveni has, however, been in overdrive; gallivanting in the countryside; launching power dams, opening markets, attending weddings and other parties, doling out cash to all manner of groups and making grand statements -- all hallmarks of his habitual campaign tactics in the past.

DP secretary general Mathias Nsubuga, one of the architects of the Opposition strategy, admits that they are behind Mr Museveni.

“By this time, we should have had electoral reforms ready because nominations begin next year. But they have not even been tabled in Parliament and yet President Museveni is already campaigning in the countryside,” Mr Nsubuga warns.
In its bid to set the agenda, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) very early in February came up with a controversial resolution endorsing Mr Museveni as their sole candidate in the 2016 elections.

That matter is not yet fully resolved in light of the situation secretary general Amama Mbabazi and his suspected designs are on the high office.

All the major Opposition parties, however, are yet to decide on whether they will participate in the polls, who they will front or whether to front a joint candidate.

In the meantime, the NRM resolution on a sole candidate by its parliamentary caucus is facing opposition by some senior members who insist the decision has to be made by party organs.

With the NRM caught up in a power play, queries remain over whether the Opposition can exploit the emerging schism in the party to give whoever will be its candidate a run for his or her money in 2016.

Three-time presidential contestant and former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) leader, Dr Kizza Besigye, argues that though the fortunes of the ruling party have taken a dip, Opposition parties are not faring any better because of a constraining political environment.

“Nothing has happened to improve their [NRM] fortunes. If anything, the political environment has been worsening for the regime on account of rising unemployment, economic hardships met by everybody and the near total collapse of [social services]. There is nothing dramatic that has improved the fortunes of NRM,” Dr Besigye says.

Political environment
But the Opposition, Dr Besigye states, has also been dealt a blow by a political environment which hampers attempts to mobilise grassroots or any support and funds with repressive laws like the Public Order Management Act (POMA) and a system that cannot ensure an impartial electoral process.

“With that kind of environment, no amount of preparation by the Opposition parties can translate into victory despite the overwhelming discontent with the regime. There is no way you can have credible elections [in this environment],”Dr Besigye argues.

The POMA, controversially passed by Parliament last year, imposed stringent restrictions on gatherings, crippling the ability of the Opposition to organise principally in their urban strongholds.

Opposition parties have also been struggling to raise cash with paranoid benevolent supporters wary of contributing towards their war chest. The past benevolence of rich benefactors appears to have been hit by poor economic fortunes the country has generally weathered these past 24 months.

Presidency minister Frank Tumwebaze, an ardent defender of the regime, argues that the Opposition has not done much to eat into Mr Museveni’s 68 per cent declared winning margin in 2011, predicting that 2016 will produce another victory for the NRM.

“One logical question to ask is; what new political activity has the Opposition invested in since the last elections to seize any new political ground?” Mr Tumwebaze asks, accusing Opposition principal Besigye of “looking for scapegoats to justify their impending defeat”.

Following the 2011 polls, Mr Museveni’s government was almost brought to its knees by the Opposition orchestrated “walk-to-work” countrywide protests against a spike in inflation that was mainly attributed to the raiding of the national treasury to pay for the NRM leader’s heavily-monetised campaign and jets.

However, the brutal crackdown by security agencies on the protests eventually had the Opposition back in limbo.

Dr Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a political researcher, says the Opposition is pegged back by lack of resources and limited contact with the population.

“They do not have the resources required to run an organised and consistent campaign across the country. Note that there is a law that imposes limits on fundraising by political parties. Also, Ugandans are not keen financiers of the political parties they purport to support,” Dr Mutebi observes.

With the NRM enjoying a connection with the electorate via the Local Councils which has recently been enhanced by a plan to co-opt the local governments into the ruling party’s machinery, Opposition parties find themselves restricted to selling their message to a comparatively narrower audiences in the urban areas.

“Their contact with the population is limited - they have no party branches everywhere. The NRM does not have that problem, as the LC system provides it with an extensive political network,” Dr Mutebi says.

Dr Muhammad Kulumba, a political scientist at Makerere University, says Opposition parties are still smarting from the time the country spent under the no-party Movement system. The ruling party mutated from the Movement which was in all aspects a single party regime.

“Political parties were banned and you cannot develop them overnight. They are weak because of having been dormant for many years. [The regime] has encircled and manipulated all the avenues and individuals and the Opposition cannot mobilise. The process does not favour a democratic environment,” Dr Kulumba says.

In the Opposition parties, politicians mince their words when discussing the 2016 polls, saying their main concern is the passage of political and electoral reforms. Key among the reforms is a demand to have the Badru Kiggundu-led Electoral Commission (EC) disbanded and compiling of a new voters register.

Mr Kiggundu is believed to be under the influence of the regime and thus cannot be trusted to deliver an honest poll, a charge he rejects with all indignation.

For instance, the Kiggundu-led team at the EC had its last seven-year term renewed in 2009 which expires in 2017, just a year after the 2016 elections. Mr Museveni does not seem likely to embrace reforms that will see Kiggundu and company sent packing.

And ahead of the 2016 polls, the Opposition is still faced with the same dilemma of whether to participate or not to partake at all in the polls.

Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) vice president Joseph Bbosa says the elections will be “meaningless” unless electoral reforms are passed while Dr Besigye argues that the focus of the Opposition is not determined by “Museveni’s timeline of 2016”.
It is important to note that Mr Olara Otunnu, the man at the helm in UPC, did not vote in the 2011 election even though he was a presidential candidate – point being that to do so would be to endorse a fraudulent process. Shortly after Mr Kiggundu announced the results in 2011, all Opposition parties issued statements denouncing the outcome which they all held was rigged or otherwise ensued from an irredeemably flawed process.

“2016 is just a date in the calendar. As far as the history of this nation is concerned, 2016 elections are meaningless to the Opposition if there are no fundamental reforms. We want the next general elections to be meaningful,” Mr Bbosa says.

There have been calls for a total boycott if the government does not approve the demands that the Opposition have tabled as electoral reform proposals. But this does not mean that the Opposition is reading from the same script on the proposal for a boycott.

While some forces within the Opposition ranks are pushing for a total boycott, right from the parliamentary to the presidential elections, consensus has not yet been achieved. This camp argues that it would be foolhardy to participate in an election that would be rigged again.

In 2011, UPC’S Otunnu disagreed with partaking in the polls at all, arguing that the election was already rigged and called for a boycott, a position which was not appreciated by his colleagues in the Opposition. He eventually went half way the distance with them, campaigning around but refusing to vote.

The new president at the FDC today, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, argues that suggestions of a boycott now are “diversionary” and “self-defeatist”.

“How can you talk of a boycott when it’s [election] one and a half years from now? If we say we are not participating, then it means we have already given up.

Even in the military, if you are expecting war and then you say you will be defeated, you are wiped out. Psychological preparation is very important,” Gen Muntu, a Bush War hero and former army commander, maintains.

He further argues that a year ago, the on-going power struggle in the ruling NRM was not anticipated, warning that “who would have said there would be an internal struggle like there is in the NRM now. We will have the same conversation one and a half years from now and you will be surprised.”

DP’s Nsubuga shares similar sentiments, arguing that the Opposition has to participate in the polls.

‘‘I would not advocate for a boycott at this time. To have a boycott, you must have alternative B. What alternative do we have? Do we take up arms? It is a catch 22 situation,” Mr Nsubuga says.

On the other hand, Dr Mutebi says in the event of an Opposition boycott, “small parties will come up and sponsor candidates who can give the election credibility.” It will be recalled that when the first poll boycott was made in 2006, all manner of briefcase outfits suddenly emerged purporting to fly the Opposition flag. It is anybody’s guess who sponsored these outfits, many of which have since either disappeared or been deregistered for inactivity.

Talk has also been making the rounds within the Opposition circles to front a single candidate, with arguments that a merger would put up a more formidable onslaught against Mr Museveni.

In the run-up to the 2011 polls, such an idea was touted but traditional parties like the DP and UPC treated it with scepticism leading to the project suffering a stillbirth with the Inter Party Coalition (IPC) only embraced by FDC, the pro-Buganda Suubi pressure group and Jeema (Justice Party).

Gen Muntu believes it is not the right time to consider the viability of a joint candidate, saying all energies in the Opposition ranks should be focused on firming up the grassroots, saying “the strategy of the Opposition does not lie in having a single candidate in itself”.

“Even if we have a single candidate when we are not well organised right from the grassroots, the single candidate in itself does not offer the solutions. When there is strength on the ground, then we can put together all those organisational capabilities behind a single candidate,” Gen Muntu says.

But the notion that Opposition’s chances improve when they front single candidates would later prove itself. In the 12 by-elections that followed at parliamentary level, the Opposition has run away with seven victories, some of them landslide.

Single candidate
In the constituencies of Butambala, Kasese, Bukoto South, Bushenyi Municipality, Jinja Municipality, Luweero and Entebbe Municipality, the Opposition put their strength behind a single parliamentary candidate and reaped results.
DP’s Nsubuga, a beneficiary of coalition in Bukoto South, says similar considerations will be made in the 2016 polls.

Dr Besigye says talk of a boycott is “misplaced” because campaigns are not focused on the 2016 polls but rather on the “restructuring of the State to engender free and fair elections”.

“The struggle even within the campaign for free polls is for freeing the State, restructuring the State. It is not a campaign just for legal reforms and that is why our focus is not Parliament. The focus of the campaign is for a national convention because even if we change the laws, nobody will respect,” Dr Besigye says.

Opposition parties have always been held back by infighting and 2016 seems to be panning out in a similar way.

In the Forum for Democratic Change, the after-effects of the 2012 election that brought Gen Muntu as the party president are still being felt. The Budadiri West MP, Mr Nandala Mafabi, who was defeated in the race, rejected the results, later on grudgingly accepting the outcome but some of his supporters still decamped.

Mr Mafabi who had commanded the support of 361 FDC delegates was no minnow in the party. In his native Sironko District, he had managed to bolster support that earned FDC all three MP slots in the district.

The Democratic Party had its own fair share of woes as its youth wing, the Uganda Young Democrats insisted on holding a delegates’ conference without the blessings of the parent party.

Ultimately, the squabbles ended with the party spokesman Kenneth Kakande being suspended. The faction fighting persists with DP leader Norbert Mao having to fend off both overt and covert sniping from within his ranks.

At Parliament, tension is testing things within the Opposition after new Leader of the Opposition, Mr Wafula Oguttu, accused some of his members of pocketing Shs110 million from the ruling party, ostensibly to offset their debts.

When Mr Oguttu went public about the talk of millions which had, in fact, been wafting through Parliament’s corridors for a while, he was denigrated by his subordinates for being “speculative”. There are also members like the maverick from Aruu, Odonga Otto, who remains something of a loose cannon, not unafraid to oppose his party.

Two years of discontent seem to describe the run-up to an election which some observers say could make or break the recovering post-independence Ugandan State.

The walk-to-work protests

Following the 2011 polls, Mr Museveni’s government was almost brought to its knees by the Opposition orchestrated “walk-to-work” countrywide protests against a spike in inflation that was mainly attributed to the raiding of the national treasury to pay for the NRM leader’s heavily-monetised campaign.

However, the brutal crackdown by security agencies on the protests eventually had the Opposition back in limbo.

[email protected]