Should Bobi Wine fear DP oldies?

Making sense of ‘crossing’ MPs

Kampala, Uganda | MUBATSI ASINJA HABATI | Kyadondo East MP Robert Ssentamu Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine was four years old when the current parliament system under President Yoweri Museveni’s government was set up in 1986. Now Bobi Wine appears set for a major role as the parliament goes through its most fundamental change; the collapse of the old parties and the emergence of new ones.

There is excitement and worry about a post-2021 election parliament with the 1960s parties; the Democratic Party (DP) and Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) defeated, and the recent Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) diminished.

But what can the new parties coming to parliament; Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP) and the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) achieve if, as is being predicted, they will be overwhelmed by the ruling NRM party majority? And what will be the impact on the new parties of politicians from the old parties?

Those are the questions many commentators on recent events in parliament, including MPs switching parties, have framed in conversations with The Independent.

The shifts in parliament climaxed on Aug. 13 when 11 leading DP legislators went to the headquarters of Bobi Wine’s NUP and pledged to carry its flag. That switch of allegiance left DP with only four MPs in parliament. The NUP had already fished several MPs from other parties, including two from the ruling NRM.

In a sign of how the new opposition political parties have possibly disorganized the older opposition parties, Ibrahim Ssemujju, MP for Kiira Municipality and spokesman of the erstwhile biggest opposition party; FDC, summed it up as “unfortunate.”

“It is unfortunate that today we are discussing ourselves as the opposition, yet towards last elections were discussing how to remove Museveni,” Ssemujju said in a tweet.

Danger for Bobi Wine

Augustine Ruzindana, one of the leading ideologues of FDC, described NUP’s gutting of DP as “dramatic.”  But he saw danger for Bobi Wine in the arrival of the DP group into NUP.

“It robs NUP of the freshness of People Power,” Ruzindana told The Independent, “And the timing a bit prematurely saddles NUP with a regional tinge before it has established roots in other regions.”

“Perception at this publicity stage can create problems at organisation stage,” he said.

Historian and scholar, Mwambutsya Ndebesa of Makerere University Kampala, says the move shows that the strategy of NRM to weaken DP and UPC is working. He says the NRM has kept the old parties in “political coolers by demonizing them for a long time.”

“Political inertia subsequently set in,” Ndebesa says, “What is pertaining now is that DP was reduced to Buganda and UPC to Lango. They are now in survival mode not winning mode. They are fighting to survive because fighting to win is a tall order.”

The university don says the old parties could have saved themselves by re-inventing themselves. He says the parties could have changed names without changing their values and the interests and social groups they represented. There would have been DP and UPC by other names.

“For DP to survive, it should have accepted to be a regional party with a regional leader not a Mao (Norbert; current leader) who is not from the region where DP was reduced by circumstances beyond the party abilities,” he says.

Mwambutsya says DP represented certain values and interests which are still valid and so is UPC and they could survive and in future reinvent themselves when circumstances may be favourable.

Mwambutsya says: “These values and interests can still be represented by a party with a different name. However this reinvention needs to be done consciously by members of the party in question so that these members and forces continue to promote those values in the re-baptized party. Different party in name but similar values and interests. After all what is important is not the name but what the party represents and stands for. In the current wave of floor crossing without consciously and deliberately moving in a systematic way, the DPs who are moving away are going to lose the interests and values of their former party.”

The new tide could also sweep away the privileges enjoyed by the FDC. The FDC has dominated opposition politics in Uganda since its formation in 2004. Under its charismatic first leader, Rtd. Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, FDC has had most MPs and always held the coveted position of Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the House and appointed the shadow cabinet.

But those privileges could be swept away given the number of political defections; especially of MPs witnessed in the recent times ahead of the 2021 general election.

Former FDC stalwart and Leader of Opposition Winnie Nyabahasa Kizza crossed to the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) headed by retired army general Mugisha Muntu.  She is among the four FDC-leaning members of parliament to have quit. The others are Paul Mwiru, Gerald Karuhanga and Kassiano Wadri.