FDC is on death row; Besigye, Amuriat, Lukwago can’t save it

The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the short-lived and vanquished former leading opposing party is on a death row from suicide, and neither Kizza Besigye, Patrick Oboi Amuria nor Erias Lukwago can salvage it, at least not before the 2026 general elections. The return of Besigye, from ‘political holiday’ to use his own words will certainly complicate its political maneuvers with other opposition groups especially NUP that displaced FDC as the leading opposition party in and outside parliament.

Both sides of FDC factions are primitively brutal and rabid egged on by the love for money that it is increasingly becoming difficult to see how any reconciliation can be engendered before 2026, and so FDC is in a tinderbox. Amuriat is a stump politician of modest political standard, although still holding to the spoils is unlikely to inspire a pivotal electoral shift in any region of Uganda, while Lukwago is an ever squabbling and self-conceited politician riddled with petty conflicts to offer any meaningful leadership as his three decades tenure at KCCA to-date testify.

Besigye’s return, even with the grandstand, is a desperate strategy with multiple dimensions one of which is the sad realization that Kampala Lord Mayor, Erias Lukwago, his preferred heir apparent is none-starter beyond the Kampala urban riff-ruffs.  The other motivation for Besigye’s return is donor political money being dangled for the 2026 presidential election to defeat president Yoweri Museveni. And with Robert Kyagulanyi increasingly being exposed more as a charlatan than a real political leader of content, Besigye believes that his stature could shift the money to his side, and all could end as a collective suicide strategy. 

Previously opposition parties and leaders fought the NRM, now they are tearing into each other in such dramatic fashion making it very hard to see how the come around it. NRM that is holding the ball is sleeping quietly though perhaps not comfortably. So instead of pretending that Amuriat or Nandala Mafabi are the problems who should be ousted from FDC to mitigate the losses, Besigye and his sidekicks need a little dose of reality in historical humility to acknowledge that since its founding FDC has been going downwards not expanding its base or even LCs, district Chairpersons or MPs. That isn’t all Amuriat’s fault. It was with Besigye as with Mugisha Muntu.

FDC leaders if on any quality need to have genuine introspection as to why their presidential vote hasn’t stagnated at 35% and MPs not above 40 in a huge parliament of over 500 seats. Also, why Besigye and FDC have since 2001 consistently lost their former superficial strongholds in war-riddled West Nile, Acholi, Lango, Teso and Kasese. Any FDC recovery, even a modest one, will depend on whether it adopts to new ideas and alternative platform underpinned by reorgarnisation, better leadership, accompanied by gross failures of NUP or NRM. To gain from NRM, failures, shortcomings and economic record which unlikely to slip. All the critical signs indicate that FDC leadership has lost its way yet doesn’t seem to grasp the scale of the tasks before it, but its estranged mouthpieces Besigye, Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda and Erias Lukwago prefer to blame outside forces especially Museveni for their own internal maladies.

Many pundits think that the fate of FDC doesn’t lie in the hands of those men of small egos squabbling to inherit its leadership but rather with NRM and voters. Where things stand today, the foolish media and journalist who previously overindulged for FDC, Besigye, Amuriat or Lukwago without offering sufficient criticism or skepticism can no longer successfully spin the old straw in their favour, and so the headwinds for FDC remains explosive.

The writer;Ofwono Opondo is the Executive Director at the Uganda Media Centre