Opposition parties, like NRM may fall ‘slowly slowly’ before crashing

Dr Muniini K. Mulera, a columnist for the Tuesday edition of this paper, has resigned from the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). The good doctor announced this in his column in Daily Monitor of August 14.

Dr Muniini backed Mugisha Muntu’s strategy for FDC to focus on building “strong institutions.” Muntu was defeated as party president by Patrick Oboi Amuriat (POA), who carried on with Kizza Besigye’s “defiance only” strategy.

“After nine months of soul-searching and reviewing my long journey in Uganda’s struggle for genuine democracy, I find that the party and I are too far apart to repair the rift. I have, therefore, made a choice to resign from the Forum for Democratic Change,” Dr Muniini wrote.

That is how things should be. An organisation is nothing more than a collection of people who work together to achieve some individual or group goals. By subscribing to set rules, regulations and procedures, members make an organisation a system of consciously coordinated activities. If, like Muniini, you disagree with some of these things, one nice thing to do is to move on.

There are many other Muniinis in FDC who do not agree with POA’s strategy. They should leave. That would be far better than insinuating that somehow FDC is a party where losers in internal democracy contests feel as though they are prey about to be devoured by predators (winners).

POA emerged a clear winner in the November 2017 contest. He took his time weighing options for people he wanted to work more closely with. Then he acted recently, replacing Winnie Kiiza with Betty Aol Ocan as Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LoP).

That move opened sluice gates of criticism, with many suggesting it was ill-advised to remove a person who had performed beyond expectations, especially during the heady months of the age limit debate late last year. Polished, cute and articulate, Kiiza, who was also in Muntu’s camp, did indeed fit the bill. But here’s the thing: Serving as LoP is not exactly rain-making. FDC will chug along fine with or without her.

Indeed, in Ocan, POA gets a committed hard worker, an aunt-like adviser, and a mother to many of the younger generation voters in northern Uganda, who know first-hand what their parents went through during the decades of conflict in the region. She is an excellent choice.

I wish POA had the courage to pick a new FDC spokesperson as well. I know Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda. He is a fine young man. Back in the late 1990s, he was an intern at The Monitor when I was an assistant editor. I was one of his mentors. But I doubt he will continue giving FDC his all.

Remember, an organisation brings people together to work for individual and group goals. What are Ssemuju’s individual goals? Do they give him more or less motivation and satisfying experience working under POA as it was the case working under Muntu?

In the organisational setting, individual efforts have to be channelled/directed. It is not enough for you to know what a person is able to do; you also need to know what the person is capable of doing.

Recent campaigns for Bugiri Municipality and Arua Municipality parliamentary seats clearly showed that Opposition parties in this country are skating on thin ice.

Differences in functional orientations suggest that different camps/individuals among/within these parties are seeing the problems of Uganda through different lenses.

Sadly, these different perceptions are increasing the element of organisational inertia among the Opposition ranks, which, like the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), are showing clear signs of resistance to change. Where there is resistance to change, there is a tendency for an organisation to retain what exists.

So, before the Opposition parties can sort out the governance problem in our country, they need a common agreement as to where the problem lies.
Short of that, they may follow the trajectory NRM has already taken – falling “slowly slowly” before crashing on the day its founder is buried along with his beliefs.

Dr Akwap is the acting deputy vice
chancellor for academic affairs at Kumi
University. [email protected]