The unveiling of the 2025-2026 electoral roadmap by Uganda’s Electoral Commission (EC) has laid bare the chronic inefficiency and embarrassing disarray that defines Uganda’s political landscape. While the EC pompously touts its meticulous plans for a flawless election, the grim reality is a chaotic mess of unprepared, inept political parties that can barely keep themselves afloat, let alone challenge Museveni’s deeply entrenched National Resistance Movement (NRM) juggernaut.
President Museveni’s NRM, with its vice-like grip on Uganda’s political machinery, has exploited its endless resources and unchallenged authority to solidify its dominance, while the so-called opposition parties flounder helplessly. The shamelessly dormant Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), under the feeble leadership of Jimmy Akena, has become a pathetic shadow of its former self. Akena, clinging desperately to a once-great party now reduced to a political relic, is a tragic figurehead, presiding over a moribund institution that has long outlived its relevance.
Then there’s the National Unity Platform (NUP), led by the supposed ‘people’s champion,’ Bobi Wine, whose leadership is rapidly deteriorating into a farce. Internal strife, particularly the festering Kyagulanyi-Mpuuga rift, has rendered the NUP a ticking time bomb, on the verge of detonating at the most critical juncture. The party that once rode a wave of public discontent to unexpected success in 2021 now faces the very real prospect of imploding under the weight of its own contradictions. Bobi Wine’s fragile coalition of disgruntled supporters and opportunistic hangers-on is fracturing, ensuring that when the real battle begins in 2026, the NUP will be nothing more than a disjointed assembly of squabbling factions.
Meanwhile, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), under the hapless leadership of Patrick Amuriat, has become an emblem of political self-destruction. The bitter feud between the Najjanakumbi and Katonga factions, fueled by personal vendettas and power struggles, has decimated the party’s credibility. Dr. Kizza Besigye’s Katonga group’s threat to form a new political entity only deepens the wounds, leaving FDC a shell of its former self. This internal civil war has delivered a crippling blow to the FDC, ensuring its irrelevance in the upcoming elections and handing Museveni yet another victory on a silver platter.
And what of Haji Kirunda Faruk, the Deputy Press Secretary to the President? His sycophantic proclamations about a ‘free and fair election’ are nothing more than a grotesque charade, a nauseating display of blind loyalty to a regime that has long abandoned any pretense of democratic principles. Faruk’s hollow praise for the EC’s so-called efforts is an insult to the intelligence of every Ugandan who sees through the façade. The electoral process is a rigged game, orchestrated by Museveni and his cronies to maintain their stranglehold on power, with the EC merely playing its part in this grand deception.
As the EC rolls out its highly vaunted roadmap, Uganda’s political arena is engulfed in chaos and dysfunction. The opposition parties, riddled with infighting, incompetence, and a blatant lack of strategy, are woefully unprepared for the electoral showdown. Meanwhile, Museveni’s NRM continues its unchallenged march towards yet another orchestrated ‘victory,’ leaving any hope for genuine democracy buried under the rubble of Uganda’s shattered political landscape.
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