NUP’s biggest dilemma

Secondly the support for FDC was not just emotional, as one finds with NUP. There was a strong principle around which to organise a strong opposition movement against Museveni – the growth of corruption and intolerance of the NRM. In fact, NRM, like FDC today, had deliberately failed to manage its internal contradictions and thus chased PAFO members from its ranks who went to form FDC in alliance with Reform Agenda and Karuhanga Chaapa’s party! However, increasingly FDC did not learn this lesson. It began to seek internal conformity with the wishes of Besigye, which led it to purge anyone who held some independent thinking.

Today FDC is in a crisis. Across the country it has lost most of its initial leaders without gaining new ones. Its strongest base was the north but today it has a “northern problem” as its leading pillars in that region have quit it and either joined NRM (Anywar, Among) or are now running as independents (Latigo, Okumu, Otto). In fact FDC finds itself with exactly the same problem NRM faced in 2005 – failure to manage similar internal contradictions. Its response has been to purge dissenters leading to these desertions.

With FDC fracturing, one would have imagined that the emerging vacuum would be filled by NUP. But NUP has accentuated this vacuum because it has raised great emotional expectations, which it cannot meet because it is incapable of building an organisational infrastructure to support its strong brand appeal. Bobi Wine’s background as a musician and the people he has surrounded himself with both show that he is unlikely to build an effective organisation! How you build a fan base as a musician is totally different from how you build a voter base in politics! A musician’s music fans are not necessarily his voters.

For instance, if Bobi Wine goes to Jinja, his celebrity status may bring many fans to his rally but they would not necessarily be his voters. Even Bad Black, if she went to Jinja, she can excite people to come to her rally but they would not necessarily be people who can vote her for president or MP. In fact Bobi Wine and his supporters need to think seriously about whether Ugandans see him as a viable presidential candidate, even though they love him as a person.

Besides, the key leaders of NUP lack both the political strength and the experience to build effective political machinery to deliver the vote, which FDC founders had in plenty. For many years, the opposition has failed to marshal a majority in elections – not because of lack of popular support – but because of lack of effective organisational infrastructure. This is also the reason our political parties fail to raise money for their operations. NRM’s organisational strength is rooted in its control of the state. That is what makes it successful.

UPC and DP were strong because they were rooted in the Anglican and Catholic Church respectively. This gave them a readymade national organisational infrastructure backed by a large cadreship of priests. Today, opposition support is strongest among urban populations. However, Uganda is a very rural economy with small urban areas. They are too small to provide an urban based opposition movement like we saw in Cairo or Khartoum. Therefore a strategy of popular uprising that Besigye prefers has little chances of success against an entrenched system like they of NRM.

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amwenda@independent.co.ug