The stench from Kizza Besigye, Katonga road and Najjanankumbi, the contested power centres of the declining Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) among its erstwhile leaders returned to the newspaper headlines once more this week, with an infertile proposition to dissolve the old, and form a new party mainly by the Katonga faction. FDC slogan, One Uganda, has not even delivered one party, but rather, different antagonistic and irreconcilable interests, is a party of nowhere, and it is hard to see how a new party will resolve the entrenched problems of anarchy and greed. FDC is now a fool’s errand in tragicomedy with Besigye once at the lead digging his heels in towards self-destruction, yet he cannot read the room that his time is up.
When Besigye began sowing seeds of political cacophony in 1999 against President Yoweri Museveni and NRM under the so-called Reform Agenda, we warned Ugandans that he was a spoiler, bad loser, anarchist, greedy and a dangerous demagogue who was up to no good, but some didn’t believe, and gave him the benefit of the doubt to which twenty-five years later he hasn’t lived up to. The Uganda media has for years mostly lapped him up. With Erias Lukwago, Wasswa Birigwa, Salaamu Musumba and Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, as maverick sidekicks he picked along, they have been kicking trashcans on the political road to no seeable end.
Besigye built FDC in toxic politics of sectarian inuendo, intrigue, and backstabbing that often end in open sewer confrontation. The heap of Besigye’s political carcass is huge and stench so strong that one does not need a strong sense to smell how Beti Olive Kamya, John Butime, Amanya Mushega, David Pulkol, Mugisha Muntu, Alice Alaso, Winnie Kiiza, Ezati Kasiano Wadri, Augustine Ruzindana, Miria Matembe, Prof. Ogenga Latigo, and now Patrick Oboi Amuriat, Nandala Mafabi and Geoffrey Ekanya left. The first group fled his wrath and left him to enjoy false peace, while the later have chosen to stand and fight back.
Since Reform Agenda days in 2001 when Besigye reached his political crescendo, he failed to appreciate that his strongman tactics could not deliver victory and has been in free fall, and FDC has been declining in electoral performance, narrowing in geographical space, appeal, and with it, Besigye’s personal brand waned.
Both Besigye and Lukwago who drive the Katonga road wagon are men who dwell more on their personal grievances to spread the dangerous narratives of the politics of fear and darkness.
Clearly, FDC has a complicated journey to run as the 2026 elections approach more so after losing its former strongholds of Teso, Acholi, West Nile and Kasese on account of the wars they exploited political advantage end in those regions. For re-introducing the dog-whistle politics of hostility, hate, sectarian innuendos and open slander into our national discourse, FDC and its architect, Besigye and his cohorts as vandals, deserve a fitting humiliating demise, exit and goodbye especially since they have destroyed themselves.
Already FDC is fringe party after being dethroned in 2021 by the National Unity Platform (NUP), another group with a corrosive political culture. With this round of spilt any crumbs of comfort will be hard to come by. On the floor of parliament, it is hard to see how the noisy Ssemujju Nganda and Nandala Mafabi will hug each other. FDC is now jungle graveyard where its members are grieving over a dead body, coffin, and funeral but unwilling to accept the cause of death and so the fratricidal war, wrangling and blame game will go on for a while longer. Rebuilding the remnant of FDC by a lackluster Najjanankumbi, and a new party by the Besigye faction is unlikely to good traction, in any case, rarely do countries have more than two big viable political parties.
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