The year 2021 begun on a high note as everyone was waiting on what was going to happen in the general elections, though it was Covid period, several politicians couldn’t settle for the scientific campaigns that were organized and declared by the electoral commission, they opted for converging crowds and having unruly procession something that caused so many confrontations between security and some of the politicians.
As the 2021 general elections drew closer, the indecisive opposition political groups found themselves between self generated rocks and hard places on whether to participate in the elections of which they always keep calling sham and unfair.
In all the elections I have seen happen in this country, opposition groups have squabbled over whether the elections would be free and fair, and often tried to dismiss their supporters in pre-election activities like voter registration but at a later stage they are always the very people being so active and this time round in the previous elections the people power group was so notorious in that it loved the elections so much that it even failed to abide by the rules that were put in place by the Electoral Commission.
From my observation of what happened as elections were getting closer, it was so clear that the wish of some opposition leaders to form an alliance and have a single presidential candidate to face the NRM failed to materialize because each of them proved to be better than the other and that left each of them heading to Kyambogo for the nominations and that was already a goal for the ruling party.
During the election campaigns, the image of the country was tarnished especially by the National Unity Platform with their various campaigns that aimed at discrediting the democracy of our dear country Uganda. On several social media platforms you couldn’t miss seeing something like “We Are Removing A Dictator” all in the name of decampaigning and talking ill of the person who has steered this country from where it was to today.
As the ruling party moved around engaging voters, the opposition spent most of the time throwing jabs at the President and making sure that they misrepresent the country abroad through hooligans like Lumbuye and some other social media noise makers who were organized just to attack and discredit whatever government has done.
2021, this year will always be remembered by some of us who made observations on the politics of this country especially when we saw a new youthful politician coming in. Robert Kyagulanyi who entered parliament on a bye-election ticket in 2017 came in as a force to reckon putting down all the old opposition parties of UPC, CP, DP, Jeema, and the loud-mouthed FDC party forcing Besigye off the political scene and now Kyagulanyi is the Kingmaker when it comes to opposition politics, infact the opposition elites are now looking at the music artist for all political way forward.
A way from the empty campaigns that the opposition kept throwing here and there including one that they called “Uganda is bleeding”, the elections happened and they were very free and fair as declared by the electoral commission and the winner took the day though with lots of resistance from the opposition.
The National Resistance Movement (NRM) successfully led with 58.62% at presidential level, 72% at parliament, 85% at district, and 75% at sub-county level leadership proving that the locals still believe in its leadership.
2021, immediately when the election results were announced, as usual the opposition took to social media and started declaring their own cooked results claiming to have won the election but of course this was expected because they had to account to the funder who they assured of the win.
On most occasions, the opposition has tried in vain to discredit the electoral process. FDC for instance, after the 2016 General elections, FDC had to install what it called a people’s president, People’s government and assembly which was under the leadership of Besigye, Nambooze, Musumba and Erias Lukwago.
Not deviating from the same strategy that Besigye used, NUP discredited the presidential elections but believed that their members won parliamentary election seats won genuinely and so some members had declared not to swear –in if there presidential candidate is not declared president but that is now history.
After all the drama, NUP took on as the main opposition in parliament, the president was sworn in, a leader of opposition and his shadow cabinet was appointed by the NUP president to seal the fact that NRM won the elections and for now, all Ugandans gave up on politics and it’s time for working and doing great things for the voters.
MICHAEL WOIRA
PATRIOTIC UGANDAN
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