Political parties 2013: Factions, infighting, and intrigue

Kampala

In the first week of December, Forum for Democratic Change president, retired Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, was involved in a public show of unity with his predecessor, Dr Kizza Besigye.
At a gathering in Rukungiri, Dr Besigye’s birth place, the party’s supremos rallied its faithful and provided a glimpse of what many of its supporters spent 2013 wishing for.
A number of people threw in a heap what they said were membership cards and T-shirts of the ruling NRM party, which they said they had abandoned and joined the FDC.

President Museveni and NRM officials had in the earlier months claimed to have eaten away at the heart of FDC in Dr Besigye’s birth place as the leading opposition party threatened to degenerate into a feuding wreck over its founding leader’s succession.

In the second half of the year, Gen Muntu held a series of town hall-style meetings in western Uganda in an attempt to consolidate his hold onto the party. But his efforts were almost always overshadowed by internal wrangles stemming from his election.

Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Nathan Nandala-Mafabi was not satisfied with the manner of his loss to Gen Muntu towards the close of 2012, leading to a quarrel like nothing the eight-year old party had ever seen.

Team Nandala petitioned party chairman Sam Njuba (Mr Njuba passed away on December 13) over the election, who in turn set up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission chaired by Kampala lawyer Ladislaus Rwakafuzi to look into the matter.

Upholding Gen Muntu’s election aside, Mr Rwakafuzi’s commission made a recommendation which rattled feathers within Gen Muntu’s camp as much as it gave hope to Mr Mafabi’s side – to hold a fresh presidential election in 2014 so that Gen Muntu would only complete the two years by which Dr Besigye cut short his second and last term.

The recommendation set the two camps on a fresh collision path with some members from either side speaking out, sometimes violently, against a possibility of changing their positions.
The party’s leadership insisted on having no repeat election in 2014, with secretary general Alice Alaso and two deputy presidents – Mr Amanya Mushega (western Uganda) and Prof Ogenga Latigo (northern Uganda) going public about it even before the party pronounced itself on the matter.

On the other hand, Maj Rubaramira Ruranga, who had led Mr Mafabi’s campaign, led the group that pushed for a re-election in 2014, even threatening to leave the party should the leadership hold its ground. The decision on the matter was delayed as much as possible, but after several postponements and setting up of another committee, members were told that Gen Muntu would serve a full five-year term.

Maj Ruranga, perhaps in fulfilment of his threat to quit the party should Gen Muntu have a full term, returned to the ruling party, but claimed that he had gone back to help President Museveni re-energise the fight against HIV/Aids.

The year, therefore, closed as it opened, with Gen Muntu looking to start all over again and kick the party into gear as the race to 2016 shapes up. At the Rukungiri rally, Dr Besigye talked about plans for a reconciliation meeting probably as a pointer that he could in future take a more active role in the party.

Ruling party pains

The ruling National Resistance Movement has a lot of pending business as the year closes. It has also shown growing signs of divisions between the ‘progressives’ who want to re-focus it as a party with the people’s interests at heart, and those who prefer first allegiance to Mr Museveni. The stage was, thus, set for much squabbling, intrigue and back-stabbing between the factions mostly expressed in the NRM parliamentary caucus.

There is a suit challenging the ouster from the party of four dissenting MPs and the party has a counter court petition to have the same MPs thrown out of Parliament due to having been sacked by the party.

The four MPs – Mr Theodore Ssekikubo (Lwemiyaga), Mr Muhammad Nsereko (Kampala Central), Mr Barnabas Tinkasimire (Buyaga) and Mr Wilfred Niwagaba (Ndorwa East) – were accused of going against the party’s positions in Parliament, campaigning against the party’s candidates, among other charges.

They denied the charges, insisting in their democratic rights to express themselves freely, especially on questions about insititionalised corruption in government.
The NRM leadership continues to face growing internal dissent. Constitutional Affairs Minister Maj Gen (rtd) Kahinda Otafiire openly campaigned against the official NRM candidate in the Bukanga parliamentary by-election, warning that the party’s bid was hijacked a mafia group.
The NRM candidate, Mr Steven Kangwagye, finally won, but before that Gen Otafiire had let out a tirade against the party’s leadership.

Also, the supporters of the NRM-leaning candidate, former MP Nathan Byanyima who Gen Otafiire backed, had walked out on President Museveni in a meeting where the NRM chairman wanted to persuade Mr Byanyima to quit the race.

Mr Byanyima, who has represented Bukanga three times, was at first declared the flagbearer by the NRM Electoral Commission vice chairman Prof. Elijah Mushemeza, after winning the October 25 constituency party primary election.

The endorsement was however withdrawn after the exercise was repeated in Ngarama Sub-County where Mr Kangwangye, who had originally emerged second, registered a landslide victory. Mr Byanyima boycotted the second primary held on November 8 that was supervised by a team from NRM headquarters headed by Dr Ruhakana Rugunda.

Questions may yet arise as to whether the rules that applied to the sacked MPs, like Mr Nsereko who was accused of supporting DP secretary Mathias Nsubuga against an NRM candidate in the Bukoto South by-election, do not apply to Gen. Otafiire. Asked what will happen to Gen Otafiire, Ms Justine Lumumba, the ruling party’s chief whip in Parliament, said that the case was out of her ambit since it did not happen in Parliament. No party organ has taken it up so far.

This, observers say, could be testimony that if the sacking of the four MPs was to silence internal criticism within NRM, it has achieved the opposite effect. This thinking is lent further credence by the fact that Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga herself continued to provide a measure of independence from her party’s positions.
When she was asked to kick the sacked MPs out of Parliament, for example, Ms Kadaga objected, never mind that she had been a member of the party’s Central Executive Committee which had thrown them out of the party.

This was just one of the incidents during which the Speaker disagreed with Attorney General Peter Nyombi this year alone, in addition to having disagreements with her deputy, Mr Jacob Oulanyah, and her now well-documented altercations with Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.
Mr Mbabazi’s widely reported tensions with President Museveni, thought to originate from Mr Museveni’s backing for the proposal that Mr Mbabazi steps down as secretary general, was also thought to have persisted through 2013.

Reports indicate that Mr Museveni considers Mr Mbabazi, probably his most trusted confidante for a number of years, is interested in his job. The ruling party was expected to hold a delegates conference in 2013, partly to amend the party constitution and provide for a “bureaucratic” secretary general who would concentrate on party work as a full-time job and therefore drop Mr Mbabazi.

But Mr Museveni is said to have gotten concerned that Mr Mbabazi was too close to many of the delegates and he wielded a lot influence over them courtesy of being secretary general.
It was feared that he would probably leverage this influence to get Mr Museveni also removed from the party’s chairmanship. The delegates conference was not held as expected.

But if the perceived tensions between Mr Museveni and Mr Mbabazi are due to the President’s fear that his colleague is eyeing his seat, Mr Museveni’s headaches were multiplied this year after former vice president Prof. Gilbert Bukenya said he will challenge for the presidency in 2016.

FDC remains focused on expansion
In the end, therefore, 2013 was a year of rivalry for power in the country’s political parties.
Only FDC’s Gen Muntu seemed keen to expand his party’s reach, maybe hugely because it was his first year in office. Mr Mao also went on a limited tour late in the year, opening up party offices in parts of the country.

Most of the smaller parties that had no noticeable power wrangles, like Jeema, Uganda Federal Alliance, Social Democratic Party, Peoples Progressive Party and the Peoples Development Party remained generally quiet.

The feeling that building political parties under the current circumstances does not add much value even seemed to gain ground this year, with some people even calling for a return to the no-party Movement system of ‘individual merit’.

Tremors in older political parties

As FDC underwent its fiercest test to-date, the story was not any better within the older opposition parties. It was probably worse.
As the year closes, Democratic Party President General Norbert Mao, almost three years in officce, is barely in charge. DP experienced an internal tumult when the Uganda Young Democrats (UYD), ordinarily considered to be the youthwing of the party, rebelled against Mr Mao and insisted on electing a new leadership.

Mr Mao, as a result, said he had suspended Mr Paul Kakande, the then deputy publicity secretary, for backing the UYD. Mr Kakande, a founding member and long-time leader of UYD, was one of Mr Mao’s backers going into the controversial 2010 Mbale delegates conference in which Mr Mao was elected.

Mr Mao accused some DP members who had supported his election, among them Mr Kakande and the deputy secretary general Vincent Mayanja, of trying to control his actions. The rift has not been healed up to now, with Mr Kakande adopting a defiant tone when we asked him about the progress of the reconciliation efforts the party’s National Council talked of instituting.

“Those who were stopping UYD from holding its elections must now have realised that they were doing something wrong,” Mr Kakande said. UYD maintains that it is an independent organ which is only affiliated to DP.

UPC, CP troubles

Elsewhere, at Uganda House, the seat of the Uganda Peoples Congress, the year 2013 passed as the proverbial calm before the storm. The forces that attempted to throw Mr Olara Otunnu out of the party leadership in the last couple of years, seemed to have been beaten back a bit during the year, or had probably retreated in preparation for a fierce fight leading to 2016.

A group of Mr Otunnu’s former executive, led by former party chairman Edward Rurangaranga, turned against Mr Otunnu and joined forces with Lira Municipality MP Jimmy Akena, accusing Mr Otunnu of failing to grow the party. They have attempted to call a delegates conference to vote out Mr Otunnu without success to-date, but they look far from defeated and have vowed to fight on.

Probably, they will draw inspiration from like-minded individuals in the Conservative Party (CP), who say that they have deposed Rubaga South MP Ken Lukyamuzi from the party’s presidency.

Mr Lukyamuzi maintains that he is still the president of CP, but the Electoral Commission has curiously started to recognise the rival CP faction led by a Mr Daniel Walyemera Masumba. At the election of the councillors to represent professional bodies to Kampala Capital City Authority council on November 19, Mr Lukyamuzi’s delegation was bounced in favour of Mr Walyemera’s.

The ‘coup’ in CP happened on August 18, 2012, when a group of party members claim they held a legitimate election at the party’s headquarters in Mengo and chose Mr Walyemera as party president. Mr Lukyamuzi held a parallel delegates conference the following day in which he says his mandate at the helm was renewed. The parallel CP delegates conferences came on the back of court battles and the factions still having pending court cases.

Political parties: 2013 highlights

FDC
Feb. Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to listen to Mafabi’s election complaints
March. Commissions concludes public hearings
June. Commission report released with a recommendation that the party holds another presidential election in 2014. Divisions seem to deepen as some members threaten to quit the party should the recommendation not be implemented
Oct. Ruranga defects back to NRM
Nov. Party finally decides to let Muntu lead for five years

NRM
April. Four dissenting MPs fired from NRM, one suspended
May. Kadaga says expelled MPs cannot lose seats in Parliament
Aug. Kadaga is in opposition, reports quote Mbabazi insinuating
Aug. Bukenya declares intention to challenge Museveni
Aug. Kadaga challenges Mbabazi to clarify on opposition allegations
Oct. Oulanyah accuses Kadaga of setting him up for criticism; Kadaga says Oulanyah should blame self
Dec. Kadaga, Musumba hit back at Kiyingi after Kiyingi alleges that Kadaga is plotting his down fall

DP
March. DP’s NEC disagrees on elections for UYD office bearers
April. Mao suspends party publicist Kakande for siding with UYD

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