The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Looking beyond 2021
Kyagulanyi could also use his 2021 presidential campaign to introduce himself and his message to voters with an eye on the 2026 elections.
Former Secretary General of the Justice Forum party (JEEMA), Omar Kalinge Nyago, says Bobi, like Museveni in the 1980 election, “is in this election to form a basis for another decisive fight”.
He says the decisive fight could be preparing for the 2026 election, and is therefore using the 2021 election campaign as a launchpad.
Kalinge told The Independent: “Bobi Wine and his technical people are fully aware that Museveni will declare himself president by hook or crook. Bobi knows that Museveni is ready to use the gun to secure his stolen victory. Bobi and his backers are focused on making Museveni regret that action. Museveni knows this very well and is preparing for a showdown. Museveni too is not looking at the election itself but the aftermath of that election, hence the threats of crushing.”
Moses Khisa, a political science lecturer at North Carolina State University, USA, is also looking being the 2021 election to what follows. He says Bobi Wine’s political strategy, if indeed he has one, is unclear. “What will he do when a day or two after polling, Mr. Museveni is announced winner as we expect it will be the case because the current electoral commission cannot do anything different? If he has any strategy at all, that is where his moment of reckoning will lie.”
Khisa says Bobi Wine could, in the course of the campaigns, whether done traditionally or virtually and through the media, manage to mobilise the population to stand up and reject the election results declaring Mr Museveni as the winner.
“That to my understanding will be the consequential outcome of his bid. But in the event that Mr Museveni manages to marshal his apparatus to, first, stop Bobi and other opposition actors from shaking the population so as to be determined to stand up this time round, and second, nip in the bud any possible post-election stand-off or uprising, then I do not see Bobi Wine’s presence on the ballot delivering anything different from what we have had in previous elections.”
Khisa also sees little values even if Bobi Wine’s party wins sufficient seats to be the official opposition party in parliament.
“FDC has been the official opposition party for the last 15 years. This has not been of any serious consequence to Museveni and his people. They will gladly embrace a neophyte party as the main opposition party,” he says.
“Whatever the case, NRM, never mind it does not exist as a political party in the strict sense of the word, will keep the super majority it has been having through a combination of electoral gerrymandering, rigging using the state apparatus and other machinations that have been used in the past,” he adds.
He says he highly doubts Kyagulanyi’s party will dislodge FDC as the main opposition party.
“I will be surprised if Bobi Wine’s party picks up a substantial number of seats in parliament from across the country. I do not see how that is going to happen magically. Is it through the fiat of Bobi Wine’s ostensible popularity? Is that popularity across the breadth and width of the country? I don’t know. We wait and see.”
Makerere University don Julius Kiiza says Bobi’s unveiling a political party is a measure of his seriousness in seeking political change in Uganda.
“The business of political parties is to influence government policy and eventually change government,” he told The Independent, “the fact that Bobi Wine has transformed a political pressure group into a political party is commendable. As for strategy let’s wait for his manifesto.”
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