Is FDC crumbling on Amuriat’s head?
FDC president Amuriat Oboi
In the first election the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party competed, in 2006, it garnered 16 parliamentary seats from Teso sub-region alone.
The number of FDC MPs from Teso dropped to six in 2011, and dropped further to three in 2016.
FDC president Amuriat Oboi comes from Teso, and is one of those who lost their seats in 2016. He will likely try to reclaim it next year.
The trouble is that the three FDC MPs in Teso who are currently in office are all estranged from their party and have announced that they will not be running on the party’s ticket for the next parliament. These are Ms Angelline Osegge (Soroti Woman), Mr Herbert Ariko (Soroti Municipality) and Mr Elijah Okupa (Kasilo County).
Keeping with Teso, FDC has suffered more haemorrhage of members, with even Ms Alice Alaso, who was the first FDC secretary general and two-term Woman MP for Serere district on FDC ticket, decamping with former FDC president Mugisha Muntu to found the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) party.
In Acholi sub-region, another sub-region where the FDC had its taproot in the formative years, things have not gone any better in the recent years. Aruu County MP Odonga Otto, a founding member of the party, declared last week that he would not seek reelection on the party’s ticket.
Former Leader of Opposition and Agago County MP Ogenga Latigo, and Aswa County MP Reagan Okumu are also estranged members of FDC, with Kitgum Municipality MP Betty Anywar having decamped to join the NRM ruling party.
In Kasese, the only district where FDC swept all the parliamentary seats (six), there has been unease.
Some of the MPs have quarrelled with the party leadership at the party headquarters in Najjanankumbi, Kampala, and at the local level, with Kasese Municipality MP Robert Centenary saying he will run as an independent next year. Former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Winnie Kiiza has said she will not stand again for parliament and is rumoured to be on her way out of FDC.
Party on the slide?
To add to this, the FDC has been splintered this term, with Gen Muntu leaving with a chunk of supporters to found ANT after losing a fractious election for the party leadership to Mr Amuriat.
The concerns about the health of FDC are far-reaching, and fears abound that what has been the leading opposition party going by the seats it has commanded in Parliament over the past three terms could become just another entity in the near future.
These fears are premised on a number of factors. The party has been riddled with infighting, with two sides accusing each other of intrigue.
One the one side, the one that claimed to want to drive the party to build structures, largely decamped with Gen Muntu, the chief ideologue of that strategy. The other faction, led by Secretary General Nandala Mafabi and Mr Amuriat, says FDC has to be premised on ‘defiance’, the strategy that Dr Kizza Besigye, the party’s founding leader, champions.
On many occasions party members from either side have argued that the two strategies were not mutually exclusive and could coexist well within the party, until Mr Amuriat stood for party president and declared that party members would have to toe one line.
Gen Muntu would capitalise on this statement to make the vote a referendum on whether the party’s delegates felt the party could accommodate the two views or have only one, and he would use Mr Amuriat’s win to argue that the delegates chose the latter view.
He started working on his exit.
With Gen Muntu went Ms Alaso, former FDC electoral commission boss Dan Mugarura and others, and more recently Jinja Municipality East MP Paul Mwiru declaring he has left FDC for ANT.
It remains to be seen whether other MPs like Prof Latigo who have expressed a clear liking for ANT over FDC will follow suit.
FDC vs ANT
Immediately after Gen Muntu declared that he would leave FDC and found a new party, FDC established a membership audit, with Mr Mafabi requiring members to write to confirm whether they still belonged to FDC. A number did not respond, and they never participated in any party activities, with a number of MPs ceasing their monthly contributions to the party.
The FDC leadership has now used this to ask questions of members who did not fulfill their obligations as they sought to pick nomination forms to stand for elective positions. In Kasese, two MPs, Mr Jackson Mbaju and Mr Centenary, have had trouble seeking the party’s nomination after being asked to explain why they have not been paying their monthly subscriptions to the party. Mr Centenary now says he will run as an independent.
When Kampala Woman MP Nabilah Naggayi had her nomination forms to run for Kampala Lord Mayor rejected at the FDC headquarters, one of the explanations that have been fronted for it is that she has not been remitting her monthly payments to the party.
Mr Mafabi showed up for a frosty showdown with Ms Naggayi on the NTV show “On the Spot” Thursday this week with copies of the commitment form Ms Naggayi signed with the FDC, showing among other things that she would make a monthly contribution to the party if elected.
He put it to her that she had not been paying up, and she offered explanations, saying that it all boiled down to how she had been in the party.
For many of the MPs that have not sought the nomination on the party ticket, sources say, they knew the party officials in charge were going to put to them such questions.
Ms Ingrid Turinawe, the FDC mobilization secretary, remarked on Facebook: “You pick nomination forms, you are rejected by local structures, you cannot raise required signatures, announce you have left the party! Hmmm.”
Whether some of the MPs were pushed or they jumped, Prof Sabiti Makara, who teaches Political Science at Makerere University, says the party is in trouble.
“The party is in a catch-22 situation. Most of those who left had allegiances to the party, but also allegiances to some of their colleagues who had left earlier. It will be hard for the party to find viable candidates to represent the party in all constituencies and at all electoral levels,” Prof Makara says.
Which trouble?
“You will be surprised,” the bullish spokesperson of FDC, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, says. He says the party is on the cusp of ushering many new faces into Parliament next year, arguing that the voters know that the MPs who have decamped are the ones who have failed to live up to their expectations.
Mr Nganda says FDC already has 400 aspirants looking to be nominated on the about 290 direct parliamentary seats, meaning they will field candidates in all the regions.
He says 83 women have already showed interest in vying for the District woman MP seats, and that the party will seek candidates in the slots which are not yet filled to ensure that they field a candidate in every elective position.
But Mr Mike Mukula, the NRM vice chairperson for eastern Uganda, sees on gloom at FDC. Mr Mukula says: “I would ordinarily not like to talk about the things going on in FDC, but as you know, when your opponent is making mistakes, you don’t interfere. You only pray that he continues making even more mistakes. Given what is going on, I doubt that they will in the next elections remain as the biggest opposition party in the country.”
FDC’s Vice Chairperson for Eastern Uganda, Ms Salaamu Musumba, dismisses talk of a slide down the precipice, but that does not explain what is going on at Najjanankumbi, the party’s seat in Kampala.
“We have no problem in FDC except Mr Museveni’s declaration (in 2016) that there would be no opposition by the time of the next general election. There have been deliberate attempts to decimate the party, but that has not yet happened,” Ms Musumba insists.
Mr Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a lecturer in history at Makerere University, argues that the FDC structure has created numerous power centers in the party and in so doing sowed the seeds for instability.
“FDC fragmented its authority. The president of the party is not necessarily the (presidential) flag bearer. There is a chairman. If the Party President is not a flag bearer you have three authorities in the party, which suggests that there is no central authority. This is wrong,” Mr Ndebesa argues.
Mr Ndebesa also thinks that Dr Besigye’s silence is not helping the party very much because he has for a long time been the glue that has been keeping FDC together.
“Besigye had better come out and declare whether he will be the flag bearer or not. He has left FDC in an ambiguous situation. Ambiguity is a problem,” Mr Ndebesa says.
Power vacuum?
Some place the b-lame at the feet of Mr Amuriat, who they accuse of failing to stamp his authority on the party since he became party president in November 2017.
Mr Ndebesa says: “Frogs will take advantage of the absence of the head of the family to climb walls. FDC has left a leadership vacuum that is taken advantage of. Power in FDC is fragmented and the party is paying a price. Unless there is someone to look at for guidance, FDC is going to disappear,” he says.
But Ms Musumba disagrees: “There is no vacuum that has been created by the departures. We have able candidates who will contest in all those constituencies. The bounty hunters who came in search of a few coins have left after getting what they had been after.”
