So!! Here comes January 15! On another day, I’d be declaring the usual, ‘May the best man win!’ But both sides of Uganda’s political divide know only too well that under the National Resistance Movement (NRM), the most deserving do not win a presidential election.
It has been reduced to an empty, hollowed-out ritual, riddled with rigging, intimidation, arrests, blocked campaigns, incapacitated opponents, and the quiet violence of fear. An election drained of its moral content. A process bent so badly it barely resembles democracy. Ordinarily, in moments like this, we would boycott. We would withhold our participation as a form of protest. We would say, this thing is broken beyond repair; we will not legitimise it.
But no. We should not. Sometimes a people will do a thing, not because of the certainty of victory, but because they’re faithful to an idea. Sometimes we act, not because the odds favour us today, but because we love our country too much to abandon it to cynicism. We vote because we see far. Far beyond January 15. Far beyond this regime. Far beyond one man and his machinery. Good people outlast bad regimes. We see a Uganda that will outlive its troubles. A people who will outlast repression. A nation that will survive those who mistake power for permanence. This is not merely an election. It is a war of ideas and endurance. We may lose the battle-yes. But we are resolved to win the war.
And wars of this kind are not won in a single season. Or in a few seasons. Heck, sometimes, not even in a person’s lifetime! Wars of this kind are won by stubborn belief; by repetition. By refusing to forget who we are meant to be. Democracy is not just an event; it’s a philosophy to be lived. Thieves may have distorted it. Strongmen may have brutalised it from hallowed to hollow. Opportunists may have diluted it completely. But we still believe in its sanctity. That is why we shall -and should – go to the ballot box. Not with naïveté, but with conviction. Not with illusions, but with memory and hope braided together. We vote so that the idea of democracy does not die in our hands, or disappear on our watch. We vote to entrench democracy in the soil of Uganda, even when the soil is hostile.
Let January 15 be a categorical statement of strategic intent: that, unlike some people, we hold it dear, right, and true, that power should only change hands through the ballot, not the bullet. Parliament, too, has been corrupted-compromised, disfigured, bastardised. It’s packed with some politicians who have no conscience and no heart for the people they represent. We’re talking about Judas Iscariots who habitually – and casually – betray their nation for 30 pieces of silver. Yet we should still vote for MPs. Why? Because we believe Uganda needs a Parliament. Because we believe it’s possible-one day-to have a good one. Institutions matter, even when they are broken.
Especially when they are broken. A good parent doesn’t give up on a delinquent child. Neither should a good citizen give up on their nation, even when it looks like what Uganda now is. Imperatively, therefore, January 15 is not a harvest; it is a sowing. We are planting seeds we may never see sprout. We are working for a future that may not reward us personally. Some of us may never sit under the shade of the tree we plant-but plant it we must. For our children. For those who will come after us. For a Uganda that deserves better than fear, unlawful arrests, torture, and enforced disappearances as a form of governance. Beloved, let history record this: that even in their darkest hour, Ugandans refused to surrender their belief.
That even when despots looked invincible, Ugandans stubbornly held democracy close. That even when power mocked the vote, the people still voted. That participation itself became resistance. And perhaps-just perhaps-when the architects of this thuggery look back one day, it will not be our defeat that haunts them, but our refusal to disappear. Our insistence on showing up. Our quiet, relentless faith in tomorrow; our undying resolve to do the right thing for our God and for our country. That, more than anything, is what makes tyrants uneasy.