When President Museveni was campaigning for Janet Adongo Rose Elau, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) candidate in the Dokolo Woman parliamentary by-election, it wasn’t lost on him that he was in the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) turf.    

The seat fell vacant after the death of Cecilia Ogwal of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party.

Before her demise earlier this year, Ogwal had represented Dokolo on the FDC ticket since 2006 after she decamped from UPC.

However, it wasn’t lost on Museveni that this was very much a backyard of UPC since the party is eternally linked to one of the founders – Apollo Milton Obote – and he was a son of the region.  

He stuck to his story of first being a Democratic Party (DP) member before joining UPC.

“By 1965, through the student movement, we started to say: ‘We should have politics of what people need, not who they are.’ By 1970, I had finished, but because of the new thinking, ‘Don’t look at people because of who they are, but what they need’, I talked to my elder Mzee [Boniface] Byanyima – our elder of DP in Ankole [sub-region] – and I said, ‘why don’t you join UPC?’” Museveni said.

Byanyima’s response, he said, was that he couldn’t join  UPC because they were “thieves”, but the President – who has been in power since 1986 – said he pressed on to join Obote’s political party.  

“In September 1970, I went to their [UPC] office along Entebbe Road. They had an office there, and there was a man called Otim Oryem. So, I joined UPC and met Obote and I said we have been in DP but I have come to support you so that we develop our country and we bring peace,” Museveni added. 

Museveni made it clear that despite differences with Obote, he thought he was better than Idi Amin and that’s why he has always worked with UPC.   

“When I hear people, like here in Dokolo, that there are people who are UPC who don’t want to work with the NRM. They are still there… why don’t you join the medicine that seems to have worked because this medicine of NRM seems to have worked?” Museveni said.

Museveni’s fears came to pass as UPC candidate Sarah Aguti Nyangkori won the by-election, having garnered 23,044 votes, with NRM‘s Elau coming second with 14,001 votes, and Dr Austin Rosemary Alwoc, Ogwal’s daughter who stood on FDC ticket, coming distant third with 8,168 votes.

It wasn’t the first time that UPC, which has long been considered to be inconsequential to Ugandan politics, has won a by-election in this term that has been organised in Lango.

Last year, UPC’s Eunice Apio Otuko edged NRM’s Samuel Okello Engola in the race for the Oyam North MP slot that became vacant after the killing of Charles Okello Engola.

This particular by-election saw tempers flare, with footage emerging of Obote’s son, Jimmy Akena who leads one of the factions of UPC, accusing NRM electoral commission boss Tanga Odoi of rigging the vote.

“You are stealing,” Akena, who signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with NRM years ago, was heard telling Mr Tanga, who responded, “You are losing.”

Factions
UPC’s winning of these two by-elections has strengthened Akena’s claim of being the legitimate leader of the political party which has been plagued by factions since time immemorial. 

In 1966, Obote, Akena’s father, managed to remain in control of UPC after outwitting opponents within the party led by Grace Ibingira. 

Obote’s misunderstandings with Ibingira were deemed, at least on the face of it, to be ideological, with Ibingira accusing Obote of dragging the party to the left (Communism), something that annoyed the West. 

Ibingira wanted to take UPC and the country in a different direction – the right – and assured the West the Obote would be ousted.  

Akena has been struggling to hold onto UPC’s leadership ever since High Court judge Yasin Nyanzi, who has since retired, ruled that the 2015 delegates’ conference that ushered in his leadership was illegal as it violated, not only the constitution of Uganda’s second oldest party, but also the Constitution of Uganda.  

Though Justice Nyanzi had given that order, it didn’t work, thanks to an injunction that Akena got from then Deputy Chief Justice Steven Kavuma, but still the Court of Appeal later upheld the High Court’s findings.  

“…the argument presented by counsel for the appellants that Hon Akena was ‘unopposed’ during the nominations in the districts was not true. The results from the impugned elections were not consistent with the meaning of a candidate nominated ‘unopposed’ in Article 103 (6a) of the Constitution of the Republic of Uganda and Section 19(1) of the Presidential Election Act,” said Justice Irene Mulyagonja, in her lead judgment at the Court of Appeal. 

“The two provisions are clear on the position that for a candidate to be declared unopposed, there must be no other nomination at all presented at the commission before the closure of nominations for the position of president.”  

Akena, who took over from Olara Otunnu, has seen his leadership challenged by a group of UPC stalwarts such as Joseph Bossa, who passed on in 2019, Prof Edward Kakonge, and constitutional lawyer Peter Walubiri. But even in light of the Court of Appeal judgment, he insisted that he is going nowhere, referring to UPC as his ‘child’.  

“You have one child and someone wants to destroy that child. I will do everything in my power to protect my child,” Akena said. “And that child exists because we have done so.”

Those who oppose Akena accuse him of selling the party to the ruling NRM.

“This is a big project: reclaiming UPC is part of reclaiming  Uganda, because the kind of problem we have as a party is a project, or Mr Museveni way back when he went to the bush he was determined to destroy political parties such as UPC,” Walubiri says. 

“You can’t liberate UPC without freeing Uganda. Akena is part of the Museveni project. The courts have spoken wide and clear, Nyanzi was clear, the Court of Appeal was clear, the Supreme Court was clear, but what we are dealing with is the impunity of Akena sponsored by Mr Museveni,” he adds.  

The disintegration of UPC is decades-long, but reached its summit before the 2016 General Election when Akena’s faction signed an MoU with NRM.  

Akena agreed not to stand for presidency and in return, NRM would not harass him in his Lira Municipality seat (now Lira East). 

“Most of you have not understood what this is about. This is political pragmatism. You may choose to believe what others are saying, but you need to know what this is about,” Akena said. Later, Museveni appointed Oyam South MP Betty Amongi – Akena’s wife – as minister for Lands, Housing, and Urban Development, and during this term, she has been appointed minister of Gender, Labour and Social Development.   

In explaining the deal with NRM, Akena said it would enable UPC to operate as a political party without being stopped by police, which was at the time led by Gen Kale Kayihura.

“The most important thing is that if the party can operate, then we have no problem. You see if we are in an alliance, it will be hard for Gen Kayihura to teargas our rallies...that is the arrangement. We can field candidates and more members will now be in a position to stand since the ruling party, which was the opponent, will be an ally,” he said. 

Still, before the 2021 election, Akena’s faction announced that it won’t field a presidential candidate, with the MP offering that the Opposition needs to get their priorities right and invest in the right places instead of going into elections for the sake of it. 

Akena said he would retain his Lira Municipality East parliamentary seat and strengthen the party’s grassroots structures for it to be able to work on increasing its representation in local governments and Parliament. 

In broadening divisions within, Mr Akena has continued to attend Interparty Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD) meetings – sometimes convened at the behest of Museveni – a move that has annoyed other Opposition parties such as National Unity Platform (NUP) and Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), that have rallied the Opposition to ignore the meetings, arguing that nothing productive can come out of them, besides legitimising the NRM.  

IPOD was formed with a view of bringing all political parties with representation in Parliament to one table to discuss political issues, but it has proved to be divisive within the Opposition.  

Hurdles
Though Akena’s faction has cooperated with the NRM for years, it seems their collaboration ran into headwinds when the ruling party didn’t support UPC’s candidate for the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) in 2022. 

As the pattern has been, Akena’s faction had fronted Mr Fred Ebil, who they expected would take up one of the seats, with the support of the NRM, that are ring-fenced for the Opposition.

Per an agreement that NRM signed, DP’s secretary general Gerald Siranda got one of the two positions. Still, Ebil lost, with the ruling party – which has an overwhelming majority in Parliament – choosing to support their candidate.

Though Akena had claimed that they had a written understanding with the NRM, the results from the Eala elections forced the faction to change the narrative, saying what had been violated was “a gentleman’s agreement”.  

“Whereas we don’t have any written agreement between us, we trusted them and took their word when they said our candidate was going to win the Eala elections,” Mr Dennis Enap, Akena faction’s legal advisor, said. “They have breached the trust and we cannot trust them again. We disassociate with the NRM going forward.”  

While Enap claimed that Akena’s faction would never work with the NRM in the foreseeable future, it has since emerged that Amongi, Akena’s wife, will in the next elections be a full-fledged NRM member.

“We are expecting my auntie to throw away the red shade [UPC] and join the magnificent yellow colour,” Tanga Odoi said last year, with reports emerging that upon joining the NRM Amongi will not only seek the party’s national vice person slot, but also abandon her current constituency of Oyam South and take on Minister of Health Jane Ruth Aceng for the Lira City Woman parliamentary seat.