Fear of purge as Mao plans payback, leadership renewal in DP

Can I give you the phone number for Siranda,” said Fred Mukasa Mbidde, the Democratic Party’s (DP) vice president, referring to his party’s secretary general Gerald Siranda during a phone interview when asked about issues concerning his party.  
 In the alternative, he suggested, that this reporter could direct his questions to the party’s president general, Mr Norbert Mao.

“I don’t have any opinion as of now,” is the final response Mr Mbidde gave before hanging up.

Though he seems uninterested in what is going on in his party, Mr Mbidde for years has been Mao’s confidant and have run the party, dismissing their internal critics who have since fled, joining the newly-formed National Unity Platform (NUP) party.
 The relationship between Mr Mao and his former ally Mbidde mirrors what has become of the DP, Uganda’s oldest part, which has suffered one strife after another. 

“The party has never been at peace and they never resolve any issue,” a former party member who joined NUP explained on condition that his name isn’t mentioned in order to speak freely. “That’s where they will be in years to come.”     

January  election
Following DP’s abysmal performance in January 14 general election in which Mr Mao, who ran as the party’s presidential candidate and posted less than one per cent, and saw its MPs reduce from 15 to nine, the former Gulu District chairperson, who has been leading for the last 11 years, was expected to keep his promise and tender in his resignation.
  Last year, following the exodus of the majority of DP lawmakers to NUP, Mr Mao had promised that he would call it a day if the party got less than 15 seats. 

However, when the results confirmed that in the 11th Parliament DP will only have nine MPs, Mr Mao made a U-turn at a highly publicised press conference in February. 
 
“Everyone is eager to see me resigning,” he said as he tried to take a veiled dig at his opponents. 

“But that will never happen because I abandoned that promise long before the 2021 elections; the moment I made that pronouncement, I was approached by those who genuinely love DP and I was told not to repeat such a statement,” he explained.

Mr Mao, as usual, tried to project the DP as a grounded party that is being failed by some opponents that he didn’t name.

“DP was built on a rock and it will never be destroyed. Some people wanted us to switch off our engines and to be dragged; we are not a wheelbarrow. We are a vehicle with an engine and steering,” he said.

Mr Mao isn’t alone in trying to project DP as a viable party, Mr Siranda, who lost his bid to come to Parliament, echoes his boss’s feelings. 

“We have an opportunity to rebuild the party. In 2016 we fielded about 121 parliamentary candidates while in the last elections we fielded 181. This shows that people are still interested in our party and we only have to be with genuine party members,” he says.

Traditional party
Perhaps DP being a traditional party can still defy the odds and make itself relevant once again. However, there is a large body of evidence to suggest this is a party that is not about to challenge for power for the foreseeable future.   
Party officials, including Mr Mao, have drummed up the idea of doing a forensic analysis of DP’s performance in the last election.   

“This work will be done in conjunction with our international partners who have agreed to hire international consultants to do a proper assessment of the state of DP. We shall carry an inspection of all our branches to determine their functionality after many of them were cannibalised by the enemies of DP,” Mr Mao said without elaborating.

Though they are trying to forge a future for the party, Mr Mao and his lieutenants aren’t just about to let bygones be bygones. They want to axe some party members who include their MPs who didn’t support Mr Mao’s presidential bid and instead supported NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine.

It’s public knowledge that Paulson Semakula Luttamaguzi, who retained his Nakaseke South seat, Michael Lulume Bayigga, who recaptured his Buikwe South seat after missing out on the 10th Parliament, Fortunate Rose Nantongo, who won the Kyotera Woman MP seat having stepped in after her mother Robina Nakasirye Ssentonga passed away, John Paul Mpalanyi, who defeated junior minister of Microfinance Haruna  Kyeyune Kasolo, and Richard Ssebalama, who ousted Vice President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi from his Bukoto Central seat, openly backed Mr Kyagulanyi at the expense of their party president.  

Even those who didn’t go through, such as Mr Mbidde, who was defeated by NUP’s Mathias Mpuuga for the newly constituted Nyendo-Mukungwe seat, and Mary Babirye Kabanda, the party’s treasurer, who was trounced by NUP’s Juliet Nakabuye Kakande for the newly created Masaka City Woman MP slot, supported Mr Kyagulanyi despite being high ranking members of the DP.

Even when its powers have clearly waned over the years, it had tightened a grip on the politics of the Greater Masaka area but when he tried to campaign in the area last year, Mr Mao landed on landmines.  

Between December 22 and 28, Mr Mao was supposed to campaign in Masaka, Bukomansimbi, Lwengo, Sembabule, Lyantonde, Rakai, Kyotera and Kalangala districts. 

The DP presidential flag bearer, who according to many, failed to show up in Masaka, Kalungu and Bukomansimbi because he would have been subjected to an embarrassment since many local DP leaders had already drummed up support for Mr Kyagulanyi and were not ready to welcome him. 

“As party leaders and elders in Masaka, we did not welcome his [Mao] candidature. We instead endorsed Mr Kyagulanyi because he has proved that he can cause change that the whole country badly needs, but a handful of members, including Mr Mao, went against our advice,” Stephen Bonny Kasujja, DP’s party chairperson in Masaka City, told Sunday Monitor in December last year. 

Indeed, DP’s decline is illustrated in the Greater Masaka area where the party only got three MPs with NUP running away with about 13 MPs.

Now that the elections are over, it seems it’s payback time with Mr Siranda declaring that the party is going to carry out what he termed as “a leadership renewal,” which essentially is going to be a purge of all party officials who didn’t support Mr Mao who ran an unaspiring campaign.   

“We need to know where everybody falls,” Mr Siranda says. 
“You can’t be a party member and yet you campaign for other people. We don’t have a problem with a divergent view but members who oppose party positions can’t be party members.
 
There are certain things I didn’t agree with internally, including the DP reunion, but once the majority agreed to it I had to write letters inviting people.”

Mr Mao’s decision to go after party leaders who abandoned him during the campaigns has sparked off a new conflict that will take a long time to defuse.  

“What they are doing is unreasonable,” Mr Bayiga, who years ago acted as the party’s secretary general, said. “That’s not how to go about things. You can’t push out members on such grounds. They need to be serious. We need to be united at this point because our numbers have decreased.”

As he tries to open up a new can of worms, Mr Mao seems to be reaping from what he sowed since the 2010 DP Mbale delegates’ conference that ushered in his leadership. 

Acrimonious circumstances
The meeting was organised under very acrimonious circumstances with many senior party members saying it was a rigged process and the divisions have since ripped the party apart. 
 
The Mbale meeting was rejected by Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, who has since joined the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party but at the time was DP’s legal advisor, Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze, who joined NUP last year, but at the time was the DP’s mouthpiece and Mr Bayiga.

Even historical DP members such as Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, the former DP leader, and Prof Fredrick Ssempebwa, warned John Ssebaana Kizito, who was relinquishing the party’s top seat, from proceeding with the Mbale delegates’ conference without addressing concerns of party members.  
 
“We once again appeal to you in the interest of our party and of our country to reconsider the unilateral courses of action you are taking under your separate forums, no matter how justified you might feel and work for a meaningful way out of the prevailing crisis,” they wrote.  

The origin of DP’s fights date way back to 2008 when Mathias Nsubuga, who has since passed on, was controversially elected secretary general at a shadowy motel in Rubaga, Kampala, during a spontaneous national council meeting that lasted less than one hour. 

Not many members attended and those who did were notified on short notice by text message on phone.

When Mr Nsubuga died at the end of 2016, DP’s members were eager to find his replacement as the party’s secretary general but Mr Mao told them to “shut up” and declared how they couldn’t find a replacement since they would be mourning for a year.
But as he was saying that, his administration went ahead to unveil Mr Siranda, who at the time was the deputy secretary general, to act in the capacity of his departed boss pending elections after a year, a move that immediately elicited a rebuff from some party members.

“They are not fighting Siranda, they are fighting me. Let them come and say they don’t have confidence in me because it is me who asked Siranda to act for a year. I will offer them the opportunity to fill two vacancies; that of president general and secretary general,” Mr Mao said. 

Mr Siranda has since cemented his position and has defended Mr Mao’s decisions. Mr Mao’s decision to join President Museveni and Uganda Peoples Congress’ (UPC) Jimmy Akena during last week’s meeting of leaders of the Inter-party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD) has left his lieutenants more divided than he had anticipated. 

Delivering change
They accuse Mr Mao of engaging in meetings that at the end of the day don’t deliver change, asking him to borrow a leaf from the FDC which has rejected meeting Mr Museveni under undefined terms and deriving a photo opportunity with the President. 
 “I need to know on the four topics on today’s IPOD agendas, what resolutions has the summit moved,” Mr Kamya Kasozi, Mao’s communications person, asked using his Facebook account. 

What Mao and his team will do in the next five years can be any one’s guess, but the reality is that its Buganda bastions have been eaten up by NUP. But still, they live in denial. 
“It was just wave,” Mr Siranda says, dismissing NUP. “A wave can’t bring about change that Ugandan needs. We need parties which are grounded in ideology and that’s where DP has an upper hand.” 
   These sentiments were first shared by Mr Mao at a press conference in which he refused to step down. 
 “We fought with honour and dignity; there are those who win but they win shabbily and winning shabbily is worse than losing. We are focusing more on what we were fighting for; still, we are disappointed because Ugandans are still waiting to see a peaceful change of government,” Mr Mao said.