Writer: Philip Matogo. PHOTO/FILE
In view of elections being a process and not an event, the 2026 General Elections is happening now. So everything between today and January 2026 will likely have an effect on the outcome of the poll. Naturally, different activities by different political actors get cast in different ways, in terms of this effect.
And, usually, the government is cast as the villain by the Opposition while the government repays that compliment by accusing the Opposition of being obstructionist. As accusations ping-pong, one quickly cottons onto the substance that the only difference between the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the Opposition is one of position. NRM has pole position and Opposition wants that level of superiority, as it were. Please do not delude yourself into thinking this is a Cinderella battle between good and evil.
It is about power. This is not a bad thing. Competition for power enhances that power by showing us what needs to be done in order for such contestation to be fair and in the general interest. It leads to a process that is painstaking and arduous, as we have all witnessed, as well as revelatory of our fractured feet of clay.
Yet it also opens up sweeping vistas to our shared values. This panoramic reality arises when we feel we are being put upon or bulldozed by minority interests seemingly in the majority. We respond with a distaste that is best reflected in how we value democracy. It is in our shared sense of outrage at highhanded government behaviour that we find our shared valuation of democracy as being a better way for government to go about its business.
Democracy is one value. There are also others of a kind that reveal a thread of consistency whenever the government is looking worse for wear. That is when we hear damning reports of kidnap, torture, abduction and even murder. Ugandans then show that they are against such misconduct by not only condemning it, but also mobilising against it.
More values surrounding the dignity of humankind are revealed in our political heart of hearts by our response to how we see our human rights being treated. On the issue of land, Ugandans have shown a unity of purpose in protecting private holdings, which express their economic rights. Here we implicitly reveal our belief in the importance of a property-owning democracy.
This has been defined as a social system whereby state institutions enable a fair distribution of productive property across the populace. This system is hinged upon fairness, and so, by extension, it shows how we as a people believe in fairness. To sum up what I am saying, I will add that if we can identify all those issues that we agree upon as Ugandans, then relate those issues to the values that underpin them as a means to discovering the values that unite us. Once we have found what they are, it becomes a small matter what divides us.
Uganda, after all, is one country. Our divisions, on the other hand, are many. It follows that the oneness of our country trumps the disunity of the challenges we have to contend with. To be clear, our issues are not the same and do not have to be conflated.
For instance, our challenges with tribalism should not relate to our troubles with democracy. If we can disentangle and isolate our issues, as a country, our unity will overwhelm them in their varied states of disunion. It sounds hypothetical. However, such a hypothesis is the basis of any society seeking to find itself.
The writer is a professional copywriter.
