Why FDC faces a future-defining race

When the Forum for Democratic Change, then only recently founded, first held a delegates’ conference in Namboole stadium to choose its leaders in late 2005, the delegates were spoilt for choice.
Dr Kizza Besigye, the brave former soldier who had gone against the rules of the armed forces and dared his commander-in-chief with a stinging missive criticising his style of rule, had been named interim leader of the party at its registration in 2004, and the first delegates’ conference confirmed him as party president.
Even though Dr Besigye was unopposed for the position then, there was no shortage of enthusiastic men and women of long-standing political and other track records who would take on the leadership of the party. Think the late Sam Njuba, late Dr Sulaiman Kiggundu, former MP Augustine Ruzindana, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, Wandera Ogalo, Salaamu Musumba, Winnie Byanyima, Prof Ogenga Latigo, among others.

Former East African Community secretary general Amanya Mushega, who had abandoned his teaching job career at university to join the Bush War and later served as minister, would also soon become available as a possible leader of FDC.
Dr Besigye was chosen “by consensus”, as the party termed it then, mainly because of the circumstances. He had challenged President Museveni in the 2001 bloody elections and later run off to exile in South Africa, saying his life was in danger. He had the momentum going for him, therefore, and a number of able men and women held back their ambitions.

But Gen Muntu would not let this continue for much longer, challenging Dr Besigye for the party leadership in 2009, and again for the national presidential flag bearer in 2010 and 2015. When he declared his intention to break the election-by-consensus approach that FDC had used the first time out, Gen Muntu was criticised by some party stalwarts who feared that competition at the topmost level of the party could break up the group.
Gen Muntu, then the mobilisation secretary of the party, retorted that he was not keen to see FDC mutate into the ruling National Resistance Movement, which could not allow competition against its chairman, President Museveni.
“It is tactics,” Gen Muntu said at the delegates’ conference in 2009, “beat the enemy with something he cannot fight.” He was referring to NRM, saying that no matter what happened, no one would be allowed to compete against Mr Museveni for the party’s top leadership.

Attempts by an army Captain, Dokolo MP Okot Ogongo and recently former prime minister and NRM secretary general Amama Mbabazi to compete with Mr Museveni within the party were scuttled. In Mr Mbabazi’s case, his ambitions met with such hostility that he had to leave the party.
If Gen Muntu is to claim to have made any significant contribution to FDC as an organisation, therefore, it may well be that he engendered competition at the highest level, lost thrice and kept going until he was declared party president.
Speaking on NTV on Friday, Gen Muntu was keen to play up this factor: “We have had competition at the top level in the party four times now; the three times I lost we did not have turmoil, the only time we had turmoil was when I won.”
He was referring to the fallout that followed his defeat of current secretary general Mafabi in 2012, which left the party so divided that the divisions have yet to heal.

A lot has changed and remained the same
Most of the people who backed Mr Mafabi accuse Gen Muntu of being laid back and not participating regularly in activism, which they say stands the party in better stead to oust Mr Museveni from power. And this is a question the FDC leader has had to deal with several times.
He says fighting a dictatorship, which he and FDC say President Museveni’s government is, requires a variety of approaches, meaning that activism and “other tendencies”, as he puts it, all have a place in FDC. Gen Muntu has almost argued recently that voting him in favour of any of his four challengers would amount to surrendering the party to one “tendency” – activism.

Dr Besigye, the ultimate activist, has remained the most influential figure in FDC, easily beating party president Muntu to the party’s flag for the 2016 elections. Those who believe in activism in FDC are nostalgic about Dr Besigye’s days as party president, and Gen Muntu’s challengers say they will work to recreate the atmosphere.
When FDC delegates converge in November, 12 years after the first delegates’ conference, they will have to choose between Gen Muntu, Kawempe South MP Mubarak Munyagwa, former Kumi MP Patrick Amuriat Oboi, and two youthful FDC enthusiasts, Malcolm Matsiko and Moses Byamugisha.

The early forecast is that Gen Muntu’s most potent challenger is Mr Oboi, who lost his Kumi Municipality parliamentary seat in February 2006 and hopes to bounce back in a big way as party president. It appears the engineer has benefitted from Mr Mafabi’s decision not to challenge Gen Muntu again, with a number of party stalwarts who backed Mr Mafabi’s bid for the party presidency the first time out now backing Mr Oboi.
There has also been a switch of allegiances for some party leaders, with Kira Municipality MP and party spokesperson Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, for instance, who in 2012 backed Mr Mafabi against Gen Muntu, now backing Gen Muntu. On the other hand, Rubaga Division chairperson and party vice president Juliet Nabbosa Ssebuggwawo, who backed Gen Muntu against Mr Mafabi in 2012, now backs Mr Oboi.

Towards the last round of national elections, Mr Munyagwa abandoned the Social Democratic Party and joined FDC, and is now looking to lead the party. The first-term legislator, like Mr Oboi, speaks with gusto. He takes a light approach to issues, which sometimes border on comedy. He, like Mr Oboi, has appeared together with Dr Besigye on a number of public functions in the recent past.

After the 2016 elections, which Dr Besigye insists he won, Mr Munyagwa was one of the FDC legislators who argued for the party not to constitute a team to lead the Opposition in Parliament, claiming that since their candidate had won the presidency, they were the ruling party, and not the Opposition.
Gen Muntu proceeded to name the leader of opposition, opposition whip and committee chairs and vice chairs, with Kasese Woman MP Winnie Kiiza becoming Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. Mr Munyagwa would later openly criticise her, warning her against ever inviting him for any meeting.

The other two candidates, Mr Byamugisha and Mr Matsiko, are both FDC enthusiasts who have served the party in different ways, with the former having served Dr Besigye at the party headquarters in Najjankumbi and in the office of the Leader of Opposition at Parliament and the latter agitating for the party mainly from South Africa.
But none of them has held a leadership position in the party that is demanding enough for their abilities to be clearly gauged. Starting out as FDC president, even if Mr Byamugisha was a student leader at Uganda Christian University Mukono, would perhaps amount to throwing them at the deep end.
Gen Muntu’s opponents are often keen to criticise his apparent lack of enthusiasm for activism, preferring what he calls party-building. They therefore associate themselves with Dr Besigye, even though the four-time presidential candidate has always not publicly taken sides during internal party campaigns.

Moment of truth
For the 2012 party presidential elections, for instance, Mr Mafabi kicked off his campaigns in Kasangati. It appeared that this was a strategy to entrap Dr Besigye into gracing the rally, but the then retiring party leader stayed home, to the annoyance of Mr Mafabi’s supporters.
Even Ms Ingrid Turinawe, the avid activist who is close to Dr Besigye, has accused him of not backing her in some party contests.

But even then, Dr Besigye continues to be linked with Gen Muntu’s challengers who appear to be close to the party’s former leader and love activism. Some media houses have already claimed, for instance, that Dr Besigye supports Mr Oboi.
It is not clear, however, whether Dr Besigye would mind a Muntu second term. If the four-time presidential candidate would like to run for the presidency again, for instance, it is possible that Gen Muntu is a good bet to continue as party president.

Although very ambitious himself, given his persistent pursuit of leadership in FDC and on the national stage, Gen Muntu has showed a rare ability to deal with defeat. When Dr Besigye defeated the party president in the 2016 presidential flag bearer race, for instance, Gen Muntu vowed in his concession speech that he would “swing the party behind the flag bearer”. That is what he did, staying on the trailblazer for the FDC candidate throughout the country.
But conceding defeat against Dr Besigye in FDC is easy. Would it be as easy for Gen Muntu to concede defeat to Mr Oboi, Mr Munyagwa, Mr Matsiko or Mr Byamugisha? If it becomes apparent that any of the four could beat Gen Muntu, would the party leader’s camp be tempted to rig?

In 2012, Mr Mafabi accused then secretary general Alice Alaso, who is now a deputy president and acting president as Gen Muntu campaigns for his second term, of fiddling with the election in Gen Muntu’s favour.
It was never definitively resolved whether Mr Mafabi was just being a bad loser or indeed he was rigged out. But with this background in view, can FDC as we know it survive a second consecutive election in which the loser strongly contests the results?
This is why FDC is embroiled in a future-defining election.