It will head into the 2026 General Election as one of Uganda’s youngest political parties, but the Democratic Front (DF) has been keen to style itself as the adult in the room. After being nominated as its flag-bearer in the Nyendo-Mukungwe parliamentary race, the party’s president, Mathias Mpuuga, talked this past week about having an eye on the bigger picture by ‘thinking Uganda’. His party, he added, ‘has a bearing and thinking on grooming and bringing through a leadership that will work for the people.’
The DF was keen to make the most of David Musiri’s switch from the National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda’s leading Opposition party. Musiri swapped NUP’s red for the DF’s green after he was denied the flag in the Makindye West parliamentary race.
Before the nominations, Lubega Samuel Walter Mukaaku-who would go on to be cleared to fly the party’s flag in the Rubaga South parliamentary race-spoke about an intention to turn a new page. ‘The DF is not a party of excitement. No. We are a serious party that is out to give the people of Uganda a new meaning of our independence, a new meaning of a free people, a people capable of determining their destiny, a people capable of building afresh, to be able to give a bequest worth passing on to our children and grandchildren,’ he said. Mpuuga told Sunday Monitor that Uganda has reached a juncture where it needs ‘a second Lancaster’.
He added: ‘The consensus that was made by our forebears in 1962 somehow got lost, and the successor of that consensus altered it, and it collapsed. There was an attempt for a third consensus at the making of the 1995 Constitution. But you also agree that the consensus of 1995 (the current Constitution) has had perforations, and somehow it has had overriding issues that must be brought back on the table of the owners of Uganda.’ Since he believes that the country is currently ‘transitioning fraudulently.’ Mr Mpuuga said the DF recently authored a series of documents on reforms critically required before and during the transition. Because the country is bottling ‘dangerous anger’ occasioned by injustice meted out upon communities by the NRM government, Mr Mpuuga says the questions and discussions around reparations are unavoidable.
‘There are injustices that need State-level understanding, building consensus, and in many communities, there is a need for reparations.’ It is an observation that Mr Mukaaku agrees with, adding that, unlike other parties, the DF has made consultations that are broad in outlook; not as a small enclave of friends. ‘We want to build a new brand of leadership that can steer this country to a balance,’ Mr Mukaaku disclosed. Before this past week’s nominations, the DF claimed to have attracted 1,520 aspirants who intended to carry its flag during the 2026 General Election. It added that 128 of these were eyeing parliamentary seats. It is not immediately clear what number the party finally settled with. By press time, the Electoral Commission had not reverted to Sunday Monitor with the final figure.
Events of this past week, however, make it abundantly clear that the party has every intention to make the Greater Masaka Area its stamping ground. Observers say this will put it on a collision course with NUP, upsetting any semblance of a united front by the Opposition. ‘From the word go, the DF was for an alliance of parties. We even proposed a law that would allow political parties to either merge or align without losing their identity. That law was never given a chance,’ Mr Mpuuga said, adding: ‘The Political Parties Amendment Bill, which I presented before Parliament, was never given a chance. That’s why political parties, small and big, are all looking at each other; they speak about cooperation, but they are never serious about it because the existing legal framework has a lot of issues.
It was done in bad faith and cannot facilitate the cooperation of parties in a manner that we believe in.’ Mr Mpuuga has also disabused observers of views that frame the DF as being parochial, with influence limited to the Greater Masaka Area. ‘I have been known as a leader who is never inward-looking. I have the best understanding of how this country is structured. It is a melting pot of critical realities of culture, ethnicity, religion and political differences. I am alive to all these differences,’ Mr Mpuuga said, adding:’We are going to offer the country a national party.’