Man United and Uganda’s Opposition are in a hole… but they won’t stop digging!

Sometimes you leave your opponent with no choice but to win. I watched the Manchester derby last weekend with a sad shake of the head from start to finish.

After a decent first quarter in which Manchester United’s Marcus Rashford scored a wonder goal, worthy of winning a World Cup final, his team then contrived to do stupid things. First, Rashford himself had two or three clear chances on goal; which would have put the Reds out of sight, by three or four goals, by halftime.  

But somehow, the boy behaved like a typical African – with dedication and diligence, he managed to blow all those chances.

In the second half, with mistake after mistake on the pitch, and superintended by a manager (Eric Ten Hag) that I wouldn’t trust to coach my dear KCCA FC, Manchester United did their best to do what they always do nowadays – snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Manchester City didn’t play that well; but their opponents left them with no choice but to win. Hopeless!

As election 2026 approaches, you get the feeling that either the bigger Opposition political parties are Manchester United diehards, or they are watching too many Manchester United games. 

It is Norbert Mao who, a few years ago, during the time that then Speaker of Parliament, the brilliant and really gifted Rebecca Kadaga was having a rough patch, reminded us of the first law of holes. And it is very simple: “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”.

Well, Uganda’s leading Opposition parties are deep down in a hole, and they just won’t stop digging! In fact, they seem intent on digging until they make it a bottomless pit…an abyss. 

Like a family caught up in a divorce bitter and vicious, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) is all bruised, battered and bloodied. It’s in pieces. How are the mighty fallen!

Then, the Democratic Party (DP): a well-built, long-legged chicken, its feathers all plucked off…but strutting the sidewalk nevertheless, and trying its best to look dignified. With politicians lost to NUP, FDC and the NRM, Uganda’s oldest party makes you shed tears.

The Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) is not a case of ‘neither here nor there’. Nope: it is ‘there’: when your wife is living with another man, it is embarrassing to insist on calling her your wife.

And just when you thought new-kid-on-the-block, the National Unity Platform (NUP) was the future of Opposition politics, defections and bad decisions are not just tearing – they are ripping NUP apart, with fury.

The bitter fallout regarding former Leader of Opposition in Parliament Matthias Mpuuga is only confirming that anything called strategic direction is steadily being lost.

Long story short, no matter how hard you look and how optimistic one may be, no one sober and sane can really begin talking about the possibility of the Opposition winning the next election. It would take divine intervention for that to happen, but then again, even the Lord wants to deal with serious, focused people, not those bent on ‘eating’ opportunities.

When public and party interest are easily and quickly sacrificed at or on the altar of private agenda, a political party cannot stand. When hitting the high seas, ships need ballast – weights that give them stability on water.

To survive and thrive in the rough and tumble of politics, parties need ethical ballast too, without which, even in the slightest of storms, the biggest of ships becomes as vulnerable as a canoe on an ocean that’s in bad mood.

Mr Museveni must be sipping his porridge merrily, dying of laughter and chanting, “with ‘enemies’ like you, I don’t need friends”. The good news is; there is a bit of time, albeit small or short, for the Opposition to wake up. There is still time for them to recall why they set out to oppose the NRM and to rediscover themselves.

A keen political observer will know that with an aging leader, a deeply fractured inner circle, a greedy, rapacious top cream and a non-existent ideological framework, the ruling party is at its weakest just now; at its most vulnerable. It is ripe for a bitter, irredeemable burst-up.

But with the Opposition in complete disarray, the NRM has been left with no choice…but to win election 2026.

Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda, [email protected]