FDC’s dream of taking power far from reality
Feb 09, 2005
WHEN you analyse the trends in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), you realise their dream of taking power is far from reality.
Samuel Alimundabira
WHEN you analyse the trends in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), you realise their dream of taking power is far from reality.
First of all, the leadership of FDC admits that FDC cannot defeat the present regime unless they form a coalition with other parties and field a single candidate. Although this project was tried twice in 1996 under Paul Semwogerere and in 2001 under Kiiza Besigye, it failed. The FDC cannot use history to judge the future.
The secret behind this is that FDC has no grassroot supporters and only counts on the artificial supporters of the defunct Reform Agenda (RA) in the 2001 elections. It is common knowledge that the said supporters were not for RA as a party. There was an unholy and unprincipled marriage with all the other opposition groups, including DP, CP, UPC and the Free Movement (FM). Their narrow objective was only to remove president Museveni from power.
When this project failed and because they had no other objective, the political marriage immediately broke down.
Various supporters retreated back to their original parties leaving the RA now in FDC, with a handful of supporters.
This is the reason why the FDC is championing the formation of a coalition against the third term. This, they hope, will enable the party acquire some artificial and temporary support to masquerade as a strong party.
It is self evident that if the FDC contested as a single party, the results would not only be surprising, but embarrassing.
The primary objective of any political party is to capture power. Why then should voters waste their time and energy supporting a political party, which has no capacity to win an election and capture power. This is a clear sign of poor planning and lack of proper mobilisation approaches. The FDC is a weak party.
History in Uganda has proved that political marriages cannot yield good results apart from breeding anarchy. Take the example of the marriage between UPC and KY at independence. Its climax was the 1966 crisis and the subsequent military juntas. This drove the country back to square one. We can also borrow a leaf from our neighbours, the NARC in Kenya, which is already cracking.
Coalitions founded on parochial objectives like removing an individual from power cannot stand the taste of time. This is because different groups come with different interests, each group wants to claim credit and there is political infighting. Each group wants to take the lions share of the political cake. The coalition gets surrounded by confusion. Unprincipled party coalition has nothing good for this country.
The writer works in
the office of the President
WHEN you analyse the trends in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), you realise their dream of taking power is far from reality.
First of all, the leadership of FDC admits that FDC cannot defeat the present regime unless they form a coalition with other parties and field a single candidate. Although this project was tried twice in 1996 under Paul Semwogerere and in 2001 under Kiiza Besigye, it failed. The FDC cannot use history to judge the future.
The secret behind this is that FDC has no grassroot supporters and only counts on the artificial supporters of the defunct Reform Agenda (RA) in the 2001 elections. It is common knowledge that the said supporters were not for RA as a party. There was an unholy and unprincipled marriage with all the other opposition groups, including DP, CP, UPC and the Free Movement (FM). Their narrow objective was only to remove president Museveni from power.
When this project failed and because they had no other objective, the political marriage immediately broke down.
Various supporters retreated back to their original parties leaving the RA now in FDC, with a handful of supporters.
This is the reason why the FDC is championing the formation of a coalition against the third term. This, they hope, will enable the party acquire some artificial and temporary support to masquerade as a strong party.
It is self evident that if the FDC contested as a single party, the results would not only be surprising, but embarrassing.
The primary objective of any political party is to capture power. Why then should voters waste their time and energy supporting a political party, which has no capacity to win an election and capture power. This is a clear sign of poor planning and lack of proper mobilisation approaches. The FDC is a weak party.
History in Uganda has proved that political marriages cannot yield good results apart from breeding anarchy. Take the example of the marriage between UPC and KY at independence. Its climax was the 1966 crisis and the subsequent military juntas. This drove the country back to square one. We can also borrow a leaf from our neighbours, the NARC in Kenya, which is already cracking.
Coalitions founded on parochial objectives like removing an individual from power cannot stand the taste of time. This is because different groups come with different interests, each group wants to claim credit and there is political infighting. Each group wants to take the lions share of the political cake. The coalition gets surrounded by confusion. Unprincipled party coalition has nothing good for this country.
The writer works in
the office of the President