Admittedly, like other questions I ask in this column, this too is rather rhetorical, but it is neither academic nor redundant; it is fundamentally a practical question at play in Uganda’s current political landscape.
Let me say upfront that it is impossible to have political parties that consistently uphold the ethos and ideals of democracy while operating in a system that, at its core, is autocratic, undemocratic, and, in many respects, antidemocratic.
Nearly every political party in Uganda that is of some consequence and relevance suffers from a severe internal crisis of democratic credibility. Unsurprisingly, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) ranks the worst!
The topmost position of party chairman and presidential candidate is not contested; instead, it is ‘ring-fenced’ for the incumbent – Mr Yoweri Museveni, who has never faced a credible challenge for the leadership of the party. Ditto the position of party vice chairman.
The last time there was a possibility of a credible challenge with the then NRM Secretary General, Mr John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, seeking to unseat Mr Museveni, the former was swiftly hounded out of the party.
For long, at least since Uganda officially returned to multiparty politics in 2006, never mind that it has been more in name, internal party elections in the NRM have consistently been chaotic and conducted in ways that are anything but democratic.
Across the political divide, on the Opposition side of the political ledger, matters are not any different, certainly not qualitatively better than the ruling party.
In the two oldest political parties, the Democratic Party )DP) and Uganda People’s Congress UPC), the respective party presidents, Mr Norbert Mao and Mr Jimmy Akena, face serious allegations of being in office illegally or at a minimum illegitimately. As for the Forum for Democratic Change, FDC, well, much has gone horribly wrong; there is really no FDC to talk about.
The latest credibility crisis is with the party presently holding fort as the largest Opposition party, at least going by numbers in parliament and having the leading Opposition presidential candidate – that is, the National Unity Platform (NUP) of Mr Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine. For a while, allegations swirled in the shadows; now they are wildly in the open, presenting utterly damaging optics for a party positioned to bring change. To put it mildly, there is a mockery of democracy in how NUP leadership positions are determined, and especially in the latest high-stakes iteration of selecting party candidates for elections.
The opacity characterising naming parliamentary flagbearers has done little favour to the party’s moral standing and credibility. Not unlike the ruling NRM, many on the losing side of NUP’s internal processes have come out with a bitter taste, vowing to run independently in the general elections.
But unlike NRM, which purports to conduct universal suffrage polls in the primaries, despite the questionable credibility of the processes and outcome, NUP does not even pretend to follow a transparent and democratic process in choosing party flagbearers.
This should deeply worry all Ugandans keen on a truly democratic political culture, but we shouldn’t at any rate, be surprised because the overarching system cultivated and entrenched by the NRM and Mr Museveni for decades is fundamentally undemocratic.
To expect Opposition parties to behave angelically in a corrupted and morally corroded political system is either to display naivete or demonstrate crass dishonesty. If we were candid and fully realistic, we would not waste resources, energies, and emotions on political party activities, including party primaries, precisely because we do not have a multiparty system to write home about.
Mr Museveni, as a person, and the ruling group more generally, has never believed in pluralism and party politics, the reason activities of political parties were expressly banned from the outset in 1986.
After two decades of explicitly outlawing political parties and effectively ruling under a defacto one-party state, albeit disguised as a ‘Movement’ system, the supposed official return to party politics in 2006 was more in form than substance, just as the preceding system of ‘no-party’ democracy was essentially in name.
In any political system, the ruling party or group, or whatever one may call it, often sets the pace, template, and modus operandi that is likely replicated among those on the other side of the political divide.
This is not to excuse Opposition parties for not behaving differently and showing the moral high ground; it is to say that Opposition party behaviour often reflects the political system in place.
Today, NUP is less a vehicle for ‘removing the dictator’. Rather, it is a vessel for obtaining a seat in Parliament or Local Government in areas where it is possible to win using the ‘protest vote’ slogan and beating the state machinery, plus overcoming an election management body that is neither independent nor credible.