In a democracy, public funding of political parties should guarantee participation, not purchase silence. Yet in Uganda, the State has twisted a constitutional safeguard into a political weapon. The 2025 amendment to the Political Parties and Organisations Act (PPOA) is not merely a budgetary adjustment-it’s a redesign of political control. Dialogue, once voluntary, is now a condition for survival. Tellingly, the law was taken through Parliament on the same day as the UPDF Amendment Act, 2025.
After Opposition Members of Parliament led by the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament walked out in protest of the UPDF Bill, the ruling side introduced the PPOA amendment and passed it almost unopposed. What could not survive open scrutiny was passed in silence. The timing was no coincidence-it revealed that whatever the law contained was never meant to serve citizens or democracy.
At the centre of this is the Inter-Party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD), once hailed as a model of cooperation among rivals. The government has now tethered political funding-previously guaranteed under Section 14A of the 2010 PPOA-to membership in the National Consultative Forum (NCF), of which IPOD is now a statutory organ.
Even worse, funding depends on ‘active participation’ in IPOD activities. In practice, this means membership to IPOD is now totally mandatory for all parties in Parliament, including now the National Unity Platform (NUP)-compelling them to recently ask the IPOD officials to avail them with the MOU documents to sign.
The first IPOD, founded in 2010, was not a government body. It was a donor-funded project run by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD). Membership was voluntary; parties like NRM, DP, UPC, FDC, and Jeema signed MoUs and received modest logistical support. Until 2022, all parliamentary parties enjoyed dual funding: NIMD support for IPOD members and taxpayer-funded allocations under Section 14A, based on their numerical strength in Parliament.
But cracks appeared. In 2018, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) withdrew from IPOD activities but remained a member, accusing the government of turning dialogue into theatre while continuing arrests, abductions, and political persecution.
‘We will not be part of a forum that sanitises repression,’ said then party secretary general Nandala Mafabi. FDC’s boycott was genuine, demanding action on earlier IPOD agreements and an end to Opposition harassment. Yet NIMD continued funding FDC, clarifying that the money was for institutional support, not obedience. When NUP entered Parliament in 2021 as the new lead Opposition, it inherited FDC’s scepticism and went further, totally refusing to sign the IPOD MoU. NUP called it a trap that launders dictatorship rather than reforms it, insisting on ending abductions, releasing political prisoners, and stopping the weaponisation of State institutions.
NUP never joined the NGO-run IPOD or received NIMD funds, relying solely on taxpayer funding under Section 14A. In 2022, NIMD withdrew support, undermining IPOD’s credibility. Now IPOD has been nationalised through the 2025 amendment-placing it under the NCF and ministerial control, with funding now conditional on participation. Yet the minister has never issued the statutory instrument required to define how parties join or withdraw from the NCF/IPOD. Normally, these organs would take effect only after the minister’s regulations are published in the national gazette-something we haven’t seen.
Meanwhile, the old NGO-IPOD continues convening summits and soliciting signatures, creating two IPODs: one in law but not practice, and another in practice but not law. This contradiction should worry more than political parties. When the State ties public resources to partisan structures, it normalises conditional citizenship. Today it’s IPOD; tomorrow it could be civil society, media houses, universities, or trade unions forced into ‘national forums’ to access grants or licences.
The government’s message is blunt: since NUP refused to come into IPOD, IPOD will come to NUP. It’s coercion disguised as consultation. Public funding-once a constitutional entitlement-is now a bargaining chip for political silence. The 2025 amendment has not deepened democracy; it has criminalised independence. FDC’s boycott and NUP’s refusal were acts of principle, not defiance. The government could have addressed the oppression and inequality these parties highlighted without tampering with the Constitution. Instead, it has weaponised public funding to reward loyalty. A dangerous precedent now looms, threatening the essence of democratic dissent. The question lingers: Is this IPOD really the IPOD?