Party cooperation: The tea party crumbles

When UPC reminded him that they should meet, Mbabazi reportedly said he had a lot of work to do including the issue of the northern war, Somalia and organizing the NRM NEC meeting that took place last week.

This renders the inter party committee useless because this is the time the government should have come in to seek their views on such important state matters.
The Democratic Party pulled out last year in December saying the committee was more like an alliance with the NRM.
The party's legal adviser, Erias Lukwago opposed the committee right from its start saying it was illegal.

"I opposed it from the word go because it was illegal. There is a legal inter party forum which is embedded in the Constitution. The committee is more or less a coalition with the NRM,'' Lukwago says.

Article 71(2) of the Constitution provides that "Parliament by law prescribes a code of conduct for Political Parties and Organizations and provide for the establishment of a National Consultative Forum for Political Parties and Organizations with such functions as Parliament may prescribe".

"In principle I opposed it as the party legal advisor because it is a stillbirth. Government wanted to circumvent us," he adds.He said the forum regulates the inter-party relations in a multiparty system.

This leaves the ruling National Resistance Movement, the Conservative Party and former independent presidential candidate Dr Abed Bwanika in the lifeless party committee.
Though Emmanuel Tumusiime who was chairman of Dr Bwanika's campaign, and accompanied him on the first meeting, says the inter party committee was never meant to last. Mr Tumusiime who heads the Forum for Integrity in Leadership (FIL) party says what the parties want is the constitutionally provided forum.

FDC might have anticipated that definitely the committee would not work out and that government was taking the parties for a ride. They reason that the inter-party committee is supposed to be an independent committee.

The President of the Peoples Progressive Party, Mr Bidandi Ssali cautioned political parties against joining the inter-party committee. He said the parties would end up being collaborators of President Museveni "in building a dictatorial one-party state" Bidandi said since the Constitution provided for the establishment of a national inter-party consultative forum, the parties should have called for the hastening of the Bill in Parliament to provide for the forum.