Body language: When the Democratic Front (DF) honcho, Mathias Mpuuga, is waving to a gathering of supporters and spectators, he typically does it with his elbows cranked at 90 degrees. The left arm is in front of him with the palm facing down, and the right palm facing forward, just above the ear.
I guess he unconsciously wants to carry himself like a paramount chief, although much of the prestige he enjoyed as the Nyendo-Mukungwe MP and the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LoP) has somewhat been eroded after he got involved in a self-serving parliamentary manoeuvre apportioning him half-a-billion shillings that many people could not understand.
His party at the time, National Unity Platform (NUP), was not amused, relieving him of his position as LoP. I believe Mpuuga made a huge mistake at the time. He hastily – far too hastily – launched himself in a struggle to look like he was walking upright on a very slippery steep slope.
Because of his earlier connection with Buganda Kingdom’s Mengo establishment as a minister, plus his links in the Catholic Church, he sought to overtly associate himself with the attributes of dignity, loyalty and integrity. At every opportunity in the media, the ex-LoP and his close political associates made contrasting pictures of an elevated and polished Mpuuga against an inexperienced, low-grade or unpolished Robert Kyagulanyi (aka Bobi Wine).
To them, it was appropriate for polished people to elegantly slander Kyagulanyi and his foot soldiers, but it was instantly judged to be uncouth and disrespectful when the unpolished people insulted Mpuuga and his apologists. In this game of nerves and verbal venom, Mpuuga and his friends have formed the Democratic Front (DF), which is even less likely than NUP to have the capacity to force through any of the electoral reforms Mpuuga has been singing about, whether today (before the 2026 General Election), or at any time in the foreseeable future. It is easier in Uganda for an Opposition politician to make political losses or to capitulate to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) than to make substantial gains in advancing electoral democracy.
Kyagulanyi perfectly understands this, and I do not know why a supposedly more erudite Mpuuga pretends not to. Citizens have to operate in this unjust NRM-weighted environment. It is pure hypocrisy for Mpuuga’s camp to enter the 2026 elections at parliamentary level before any reforms when they have been castigating NUP for participating before those reforms.
The undeclared heart of the matter is that when the political lineage that runs from Ben Kiwanuka, through Paul Ssemogerere and a distinctly uncharismatic Sebaana Kizito brought in Nobert Mao, who speaks in riddles, the once formidable Democratic Party (DP) looked more like a joke that was half drip patient and half NRM fodder.
Many DP stalwarts felt that their party had lost direction because it had replaced Sebaana with the wrong inheritor, moreover through a disputed party election in Mbale. Unfortunately, Mao was not leaving office. He would in fact design another customised party election in Mbarara a few years down the road.
A wave of desertions before the 2021 elections saw many of the pretenders to the DP throne migrating with their ambition to the then new National Unity Platform, expediently supporting the man of the moment, Kyagulanyi, as their national presidential candidate. I suspect some of these people still secretly believe that Kyagulanyi had jumped ‘the queue’. Even in their new parties after finally leaving NUP, the work to undermine Kyagulanyi sometimes consumes more of their time than trying to become paramount chief.