The political ground is beginning to shake again in preparation for 2026 general elections as inter and intra party elbowing come to the surface, possibly realignments and NRM needs to keep possible opposition resurgence within check. After 37 years under President Yoweri Museveni, NRM no longer enjoy much of the rose garden considering various internal malaise, impudence and public dissatisfaction over sluggish service delivery.

There’s a thriller book titled “The Lying Tongue” by Andrew Wilson, and also a Bible verse; The Deadly Sins; Proverbs 6-16-19: A Lying Tongue, which God detests. Bobi Wine, otherwise called Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu seeks to out-flank both, and is a let-down in his political message, not that the public expected much from a local musician turning into a political maestro.

The recent chain of military coups in West Africa, mostly former French colonies is an inflection point, a disdain and rebuke to French meddling, dilemma for a lackluster African Union (UA), and exposes the stupidity of its psychology. The AU left putschists intact in Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea Conakry, Egypt, Zimbabwe and Sudan where a civil war is raging. This week Gabon’s Omar Bongo Ondimba fell in a surprise turn of events minutes after being declared the winner of a presidential election, and few will ‘make noise’ in his favour.

Fire continues to rage in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) opposition party which pundits cannot ignore. Some seem to believe that the National Resistance Movement (NRM) political Organisation, not a party, as we, its founders in 2003 preferred to call it is not very different from opposition parties we like mocking considering some aspects in its current trajectory.

With 530 MPs, 82 ministers, and thousands of other personnel on public payroll but whose real contributions to the country’ progress cannot be measured, many areas of duplication, wastefulness, and pervasive corruption, yet plenty of resources, Uganda probably deserves neither pity nor World Bank (WB) loans.

The ongoing civil war in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) is on purpose announcing Warren Smith Kizza Besigye’s return as the doyen of opposition politics in the run-up to the 2026 general elections with a desperate expectation to topple President Yoweri Museveni who will be aged 82 with 40 years under his belt as president of Uganda. With 23 years in opposition but without much discernible success, Besigye is running desperately impatient, and so he wants to get either power or money. 

Saint Petersburg, formerly Petrograd, then Leningrad, our venue last week for the well-attended Second Russia-Africa Forum with at least seventeen presidents, and forty-nine delegations of African governments and Regional Organisations is Russia’s second largest city of seven million after Moscow with fifteen million people. Presidents Yoweri Museveni, Cyril Ramaphosa, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Mackay Sall, and Azali Assoumani (the Comoros) and AU Chairman to mention just a few were there.

From the corners of both eyes am watching a big fight break out among a pack of wolves and hounds in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party over a carcass with each side unlikely to back down soon. Col. (Rtd) Warren Smith Kizza Besigye the destroyer will carry on sinking the remains of a ship he once captained because of greed and need for revenge.

Next week Wednesday to Saturday, President Vladimir Putin will be hosting the second Russia-Africa summit in the northwest city of Saint Petersburg, 700 kilometres from Moscow. It is a follow-up on the first one held in the Black Sea Resort city of Sochi in 2019 on whose heels Covid-19 pandemic struck, paralyzing the global economy from which every country is recovering.

Seven parliamentary and two district chairperson by-elections characterized by violence and malpractices, where the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has won six, but lost the just concluded Oyam North parliamentary seat to Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) threatens to cast democracy down a slippery slope. UPC, now a shell, has gone down a dark-silent grave not entirely underserved. In its heydays 1962-71 and 1981-July 1986 it demonstrated unrestrained ruthlessness.