Besigye not running for president, says FDC party

Opposition activist Kizza Besigye is playing hardball with his Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) colleagues, refusing to yield to calls to challenge for the presidency for a fifth time, which has left many party faithful sitting uneasy.

The party has fielded Dr Besigye on all three occasions since its founding in 2005, and Dr Besigye had competed for the presidency one other time in 2001 before political parties were reintroduced.

Since the founding of the FDC, the only person who has challenged Dr Besigye for the party ticket is Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, who has since left the party to found the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT).

The possibility of Dr Besigye not running for president has therefore, caused unease within FDC, which is fast running out of time to find a replacement they consider suitable for the task.

“Dr Besigye has said he is not running,” Mr Nathan Nandala Mafabi, the FDC secretary general, said.

Pressed on whether he thought Dr Besigye could change his mind, Mr Mafabi said: “That is a personal decision”.
Even on the previous occasions, Dr Besigye voiced reluctance to stand, citing different reasons.

When he first competed for the presidency on the FDC ticket in 2006, Dr Besigye flew into the country from exile in South Africa, where he had fled citing threats to his life.

On returning to the country, he was arrested and charged with treason, misprision of treason and rape.
He was nominated to run while in prison and even when he was released on bail, he kept appearing in court during the campaign period.

Different individuals who attended the meetings in South Africa in which Dr Besigye’s return was agreed say he expressed reluctance to return to the country but was prevailed upon by his close colleagues, including the late Sam Njuba, who recruited him into the rebellion that brought President Museveni to power.

In the run up to the 2011 election, Dr Besigye was still coy about running for president, saying that his candidature would only be based on the electoral system being reformed.

During an engagement with journalists at Kati Kati Restaurant in Kampala, Dr Besigye declared: “No reforms, no election. We would rather fight before the election (to cause reforms) instead of fighting after the election.”
Dr Besigye was then operating within the Interparty Cooperation (IPC), which sought to bring together Opposition players to challenge Mr Museveni.

The effort was encouraged by developments in the United States of America, then led by Mr Barack Obama, where Congress had taken a specific interest in Uganda’s politics, particularly the pursuit of electoral reforms.

Things would however change fast after the July 2010 twin bombings in Kampala, in which more than 70 people were killed. With the US changing its focus away from democracy in Uganda and towards the war on terror (against the al-Shabaab in Somalia), the pressure on electoral reforms that had been put on Mr Museveni’s government was lifted.
Dr Besigye changed approach too, from “No reforms, no election” to “we shall overwhelm the rigging”.

After Dr Besigye declared that he would run against Mr Museveni despite the lack of reforms, there was a bitter split in the IPC, with Mr Olara Otunnu pulling his Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) out of it. Largely dull campaigns followed, and after Mr Museveni was declared winner with 68 per cent of the votes, bloody protests dubbed “Walk to Work” followed.

A study by multiple scholars sponsored by the Deepening Democracy Programme of the European Union then concluded that Ugandans believed that elections could not get Mr Museveni out of power, a view that Dr Besigye had voiced and continued to propagate in the years that followed. He would declare that he would never run against President Museveni again unless the electoral system was reformed.
But Dr Besigye would go against this promise to run again in 2016, inviting criticism from different circles, with many claiming that in breaking his promises, he was no different from President Museveni who he criticises.

After Dr Besigye was nominated to run for president in November 2015, Gen David Sejusa, speaking at the post-nomination rally in Nakivubo stadium, said he had been among the people who convinced Dr Besigye to run in that election.

“Besigye told me that he did not want to stand in Museveni’s election,” Gen Sejusa said at the rally, “I told him, ‘don’t stand in Museveni’s election; stand in the people’s election’.”

To run in the 2016 election, Dr Besigye had to defeat Gen Muntu for the party’s flag and undergo a process under The Democratic Alliance (TDA) that came down to trying to get either Dr Besigye or former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi cede ground for the other to run as the joint opposition candidate. In the end both stood.

Dr Besigye was once again Mr Museveni’s closest challenger, polling 35.6 per cent of the votes against Mr Museveni’s 60.6 per cent, according to the Electoral Commission.

Mr Mbabazi officially polled 1.4 per cent. Dr Besigye rejected the results, saying that he had won with 52 per cent. He based on that to declare himself ‘people’s president’ and set up a ‘people’s government’.

Whereas Dr Besigye has continued his activism against President Museveni, he has continued to dismiss the ability of elections to cause change.

This stance has attracted bitter criticism against him, with even Opposition players accusing him of playing double standards – saying elections don’t work and then turning around to run in them.

A source close to Dr Besigye said this is one of the reasons the Opposition activist is determined to stay away from the coming election.

The source said: “Doctor (Besigye) is tired of being abused by regime agents disguising as opposition people and he is not interested in running anymore unless the situation changes.”
FDC’s headache
Through the ‘people’s government’, Dr Besigye, has taken more interest in peaceful resistance other than elections, and has repeatedly said that any election with President Museveni still in charge will be predetermined in the incumbent’s favour.

His stance has left his party in a dilemma, with many of the leaders and members looking to get elected in different positions.

They have traditionally relied on the party’s presidential flag bearer as a rallying point and chief mobiliser, and the party leaders are sweating over drafting in a player of the stature of Dr Besigye to fill the void. They have just about a month to do that, which is a hard task.

Some party members who are looking to run for different positions are already looking to People Power principal Robert Kyagulanyi as the new rallying point, but a number of party leaders are still opposed to the idea.
Party president Patrick Amuriat Oboi, for instance, says Mr Kyagulanyi can only get FDC’s support if he joins the party.
It also remains unclear whether Dr Besigye will campaign for any candidate in case he does not run.