EWhen the process for the general elections now underway was called, the National Unity Platform opposition party, led by Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine chose a mantra, it named ‘Protest vote’ leaving many Ugandans wondering what they meant yet they were participating. In many respects, NUP and some of its leaders look so desperate, more like Dr Warren Smith Kizza Besigye Kifefe of 2006-2011, when in his political heydays hoping to employ bellicosity, intransigence, confrontation, and violent civil disobedience to topple Yoweri Museveni but ended in tears.
As political amateurs, NUP leaders seem not to understood or learnt any useful lessons from Besigye’s episodes, and as poor copycats, are trying to practice from the same tired scripts. First, they have tried to cast doubt and sow negativity against key government institutions starting with the electoral commission which is directly responsible for organizing the elections, and lead personnel, the chairperson Justice Byabakama Mugenyi Simon. This is similar to Besigye and FDC against Eng. Badru Kiggundu, then EC Chairperson.
Next, they have built a posture of confrontation with the police and other security services by unreasonably defying their instructions on law enforcement regulations even when lawful and necessary for the common good. Many perhaps still remember FDC and the so-called ‘walk-to-work’, defiance and civil disobedience.
NUP has tried to disregard every regulation governing the conduct of public campaigns, polling, counting, tallying and declaration of election results so as to create a situation of permanent discontent and tension so that a narrative of unfairness is perpetuated in the public mind. In fact NUP plans, as they did in 2021, that in areas it believes are strongholds, to prevent those who do not support them especially NRM members from voting. These lines are being picked directly from Besigye’s failed notebook where he had the so-called Power10 vote protectors, a private tally centre to declare his victory, and the eventual swearing-in as ‘the people’s president.’
Furthermore, copying from the script of Tanzania’s recent elections, NUP plans to disrupt polling, vote-counting or tallying so as to create situations of anarchy as a precursor for violent riots which they hope to use to overrun government. And of course they expect a hard response from law enforcement agencies that could as well fuel mass arrests and possibly blood on the streets to blight the government.
This is the reason NUP is defiantly calling on its supporters to remain at the polling stations countrywide half-cleverly claiming it is meant to protect vote fraud and theft even when they know that the law permits every candidate two official polling agents at the station to observe the entire process. The mavericks aware of their vulnerabilities have recruited heavy-hitting, but shallow ‘foot-soldiers’ to do the lifting.
Now eclipsed by NUP, the guards in DP, UPC, FDC, JEEMA, and ANT fearful to be run down, cannot afford to tell Kyagulanyi gangsters that they are taking the wrong path. PFF and DF, competing with Kyagulanyi for the same tribal attention within Buganda can only whisper from under their beds. None from both groups can dare tell Kyagulanyi that he is incompetent or unfit to lead Uganda, so the pander on, waiting for the nightmare to end, because they cannot topple his ratings. And Kyagulanyi thinks that they may collapse and picks the dregs seeking safe seats as he did in 2021.
We foretold FDC and Besigye in their good days when Ugandans still favoured them, that blind political hubris may last for a while but eventually evaporates, and hopefully they have painfully learnt a lesson. FDC and Besigye are empty political shells today. Kyagulanyi and his surrogates ought to read that brief history and know they cannot win a democratic process simply by ramming their heads against the hard wall of the NRM revolution.
The story is written by: Ofwono Opondo, Former Executive Director of Uganda Media Centre
