Finally, after five years of non-stop media, bar, pork joint, health club, burial site, and media discussions about the 2026 General Election, it is just days away.
Incidentally, it says something about how central politics is to everything in Uganda that hardly had the dust settled on the 2021 General Election, than we started speculating about 2026.
In many ways, this has been a disappointing campaign by all political parties and all eight presidential candidates.
More news was made by the crackdown on and bullying of Opposition supporters, the blocking of campaign venues, and the one-sidedness of the State-owned media than the campaign messages themselves.
It was a campaign more from 1996 than reflecting the realities and needs of 2026.
Because of the Covid-19 lockdown, the last election season of 2020 was branded a ‘scientific campaign’, with no crowds permitted to form and candidates encouraged to use the news media and social networking platforms.
The 2025 campaign season should have built on this. The 2020 season should have made them realise that a campaign, not just at the parliamentary level but up to the presidential, can be conducted entirely via the media. Not only is it much cheaper that way; it is less time-consuming and exhausting. Most importantly of all, it reaches many more people.
An appearance on a radio station in Jinja or Mbarara, Gulu or Masaka, will be heard by, say, 30,000 people. This is a small audience for radio, but in a sports stadium or Boma Grounds, this is a huge, impressive crowd.
Campaign posters whose colours fade in the sun or rain, or which are torn down by rival camps, remain intact on social media and, of course, do not require millions of shillings to print.
Whichever way one measures it, the scientific campaign of 2020 was beneficial and should have become the new standard.
Instead, presidential and other candidates reverted to the 1990s campaign style that emphasises posters and physical crowds.
Bobi Wine
One of the youngest presidential candidates in this race, Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, of NUP is the one I would have expected to be most in touch with the technological trends and tools shaping the 21st Century economy and society.
Kyagulanyi should have driven a message about digitisation and deploying the latest digital technology to try and develop or revamp Uganda.
Instead, like candidates Yoweri Museveni of NRM and Nandala Mafabi of FDC, Bobi Wine, in his campaign messages, promised the standard analogue-era deliverables – jobs, better schools, better hospitals.
Mugisha Muntu
Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu of ANT, in particular, was disappointing because he had so much going for him.
Muntu has always been viewed as an elite, or elitist, or liked by the elite. For most politicians, this is derogatory, as most of them prefer to be thought of as being ‘a man of the people’.
But in marketing, this is a useful and important demarcation. Muntu should have embraced this ‘elitist’ identity and focused his campaign on the 10 main towns, rather than get a paltry 100,000 votes after spending five months crisscrossing the country, failing to connect with rural peasants and losing valuable time to engage with town elites.
Most current and former soldiers respect Gen Muntu for his integrity and discipline. He should have known this reputation and built a campaign message around it.
He did emphasise discipline in an address to the press upon his nomination, but out on the campaign trail, he seems to have dropped it and chose to focus on the usual mundane promises.
Nandala Mafabi
Likewise, Nandala Mafabi went about on a nationwide campaign but failed to gain much traction.
Since he already enjoys meaningful political support in Bugisu Sub-region, he could have abandoned certain regions like the west and focused his effort entirely on Bugishu, Busia, and maybe Busoga.
At several campaign stops, he highlighted his professional training as an accountant and promised accountability if elected and better service delivery.
On paper, his campaign message made sense, but he should have tapped into something deeper than tax and accounting messages. After all, the runaway corruption in Uganda over the past 35 years is not because Uganda is short of ACCA graduates or professional auditors.
It sounds a bit crude, but the most realistic messaging from Mafabi should have been one of ‘it’s our turn to eat’, on behalf of eastern Uganda.
Maybe not put so crudely, but an argument along the lines of eastern Uganda having never yet had a head of state since independence, would sell.
Mafabi should also have appreciated the deep resentment felt in parts of the country at his role in the break-up of the FDC party and addressed it as a way to win back some sympathy.
Yoweri Museveni
NRM presidential candidate Museveni also ran a confusing campaign.
He, more than the other seven presidential candidates, knows or should know that a large part of politics is identity and strong feelings of justice.
The reason his Popular Resistance Army (PRA) merged with Yusufu Lule’s Uganda Freedom Fighters in 1981 was to broaden the PRA’s appeal beyond Banyankore and Banyarwanda.
The reason he has tended to have a Catholic vice president or ministers from certain regions was to appeal to popular perception and sentiment.
In this 2025-2026 campaign, however, he decided to focus about 90 percent of his messaging on development economics and microfinance.
Essentially, his presidential tour was a PDM countrywide review – seeds given to this community, goats to that village, cash to this Sacco, fishing nets to that canoe landing site.
It did not occur to him that perhaps the widespread resentment of the NRM in certain parts of the country might be because of the blatant impunity and the jailing of Opposition supporters, not necessarily poverty.
Whoever is announced the winner at the end of this week, it will not be an ideal choice for the mountain of nearly intractable problems that Uganda faces today.
We shall need to look outside the next government to tackle these challenges.