Is it time to write Mao’s political obituary?

For future reference. In one or two months’ time, DP president Norbert Mao, hopes to release his prison diaries, which he has written under the working title Letters From Nakasongola. It embodies his “stories and reflections” when he was incarcerated in the Nakasongola Prison during the Walk-to-Work protests. Then in a year’s time, Mr Mao hopes to publish his life’s story under the title Tomorrow Will Come, writes Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi.

He vied for the presidency on DP ticket in 2011 and came a distant third. The current political readings don’t seem to give him a good chance of challenging for power in 2016. His critics in DP say Mr Mao is only interested in the party as a vehicle to the presidency.

But Dr Lyomoki insists that Mr Mao is his former old self and is fit to be president except for three factors.
The first one is about the times. He sees Mr Mao as “a good politician in a bad season,” which has been “defiled” by the politics of President Museveni.

A person who wants to follow the law like Mr Mao, Dr Lyomoki says, is sure to get problems competing in the current environment of “political manipulation”. Dr Lyomoki is a member of the ruling party but every so often he quarrels with its leadership over various issues.

Media’s role

In the current politics, adds Dr Lyomoki, the media and the public pick on people who “play to the gallery” and it is difficult for people like Mr Mao to “pass through the sieve”.

The other issue Dr Lyomoki raises is that Mr Mao is weighed down by the baggage of DP, Uganda’s oldest political party, which has never held power save for the interim pre-independence period between 1961 and 1962. The party has been so demonised, according to Dr Lyomoki, that Mr Mao “needs extra-ordinary anointing” to launch a successful bid for the presidency through DP.

In the Bible, Dr Lyomoki says, David had to abandon the military armour with the sword, spear and shield and used stones, sling and sack to finish off the giant, Goliath. But in Mr Mao’s case, Dr Lyomoki says, “Mao has failed to craft his own armour fitting his ability and gifting and preferred to function using the unknown gear that appears not fit for him.”

Mr Mao himself sums up the current impasse in his party in the following way: “The battle lines have been drawn between the king and the king makers.”

On Tuesday, he told a press conference at the party’s headquarters that 20 members of DP and UYD would face disciplinary action over defying the party leadership and holding a delegates conference in which Luweero Woman MP Brenda Nabukenya was voted UYD president.

Those to face disciplinary action

Among the 20 is Kenneth Paul Kakande, the deputy publicity secretary, who has been speaking for DP since his boss, Mwaka Lutukumoi, crossed to the ruling NRM, and deputy secretary general Joseph Mayanja.

This is at least the second time the duo have disagreed publicly with Mr Mao’s leadership, the first time being when they opposed what they called Mao’s unilateral endorsement of legal adviser Fred Mukasa Mbidde as DP’s candidate for the East African Legislative Assembly seat. They too wanted to contest.

The duo, among others who are also in the firing line, staunchly supported the process leading to the controversial Mbale delegates’ conference of 2010 in which Mr Mao was voted DP president and they backed Mr Mao against former Kampala Mayor Nasser Ssebaggala.
With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Mao now wonders whether some members of DP (those he calls king makers) backed him in the hope that they would then blackmail him into doing whatever they wanted him to do.

“May be some of the members of my team don’t want me to lead,” he told us in his private office in Kampala. One time in 2010, Mr Mao says, some members of his team wanted him to skip a victory party for Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze, with whom they had quarrelled violently and had boycotted Mbale. Ms Nambooze was celebrating court victory over her then rival for the Mukono North seat, the Rev. Peter Bakaluba Mukasa.

Man of non-negotiable values