Before 2026, there is need for poll reforms

The NUP tour is also intended as an Opposition answer to the ongoing political tour of the country by President Museveni’s son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

Both tours, in turn, indirectly mark the start of the run-up to the 2026 General Election.
Amid this political activity, however, the media, political class, and civil society have not focused sufficiently on something crucial: Electoral reforms.

Crowds are fine as a tool for generating public excitement and marketing a party, but in the end, it comes down to ballots in a box and how they are announced.

For more than a decade now, the reform of the current electoral system and the Electoral Commission have been key demands of the Opposition.

The goal is to create a level playing field, on which truly free and fair elections can be held.
Without these reforms, the 2026 election and its immediate aftermath will simply be a repetition of the aftermath of all general elections since 1996, in which elections will be held within a system heavily favouring the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, with other political parties certain to lose regardless of the voting.

The most recent effort by the Opposition parties at initiating electoral reforms was a three-day consultative workshop held in Kampala at the beginning of June.

That the reforms have not taken place so far can be blamed on both the NRM and the Opposition itself.

For obvious reasons, it’s in the interest of the NRM that the current situation, in which the ruling party is fused with the government, remains.

For less obvious reasons, the situation as it is also works for the Opposition.
Or, to put it another way, it does not anger, inconvenience, and disfavour the Opposition so critically that they are willing to focus all its energy, time, and lobbying on securing the reforms.

To understand why, let’s look at Uganda’s present political structure which has an informal three-tier electoral system.

At the top of the tier is the presidency, which in electoral terms means the government.
This presidential office has been sealed off for the exclusive possession of President Museveni since 1986.

At the second tier of political power is Parliament.
Uganda’s Parliament is powerless in comparison with the power wielded by the head of State, but Parliament is powerful in relation to the third tier at the local council and district level.

NRM holds the vast majority of seats, making it impossible for the Opposition to enact any meaningful laws of benefit to them.

With these parliamentary seats also comes plenty of privileges and opportunities for the MPs, ruling party or Opposition alike -- large salaries and allowances, social prestige, overseas travel (for which they get $720, or Shs2.7m, per night), and more.

Would the Opposition MPs, for instance, be willing to support electoral reforms that slash the number of parliamentary seats from the present 550 to, say, 60, and by that eliminate themselves from political existence? Hardly.

It explains why calls by past presidential candidates like Uganda Peoples Congress’ (UPC) Olara Otunnu for a boycott of the entire election received little support from the Opposition.
It also explains why during the tenure of Rebecca Kadaga as Speaker, proposals for electoral reforms were brought before the House but failed to gain much traction, even among the Opposition.

This is the Opposition’s core contradiction – condemning the NRM system but which same system benefits them individually.

Claims by the Opposition that the reason they take part in the same election that they know well in advance will not lead to a change of government is to use the election campaign to highlight the population’s suffering, are unconvincing.

For all these reasons, there is little chance that there will be electoral reforms between now and 2026, whether proposed by the NRM or Opposition parties.

Organised domestic pressure for the reforms can only come from civil society, academia, and the media who, at least, have a degree of detachment from the political system.

But even here, civil society and the media can only go so far if the political class, including the Opposition, do not actively cooperate.

As things stand today, for the electoral reforms to take place it requires nothing short of dismantling the entire NRM state and starting afresh with a new, impartial, bureaucratic civil service.

Electoral reforms would thus also require a new Constitution, or rather, the restoration of the Constitution as promulgated in October 1995, that curbs presidential powers.

This is because over the last 25 years, practically all persons currently holding senior civil service and military offices have been more or less appointed by President Museveni.

These appointments by the President have not been just by the formal procedure that requires his signature as head of State; the impression given is that the appointees were personally vetted and approved by the President.

This gives most of these officials a feeling of obligation to the President and seeing themselves as serving him rather than the State.

In the 28 years since 1995, even though it imposed limits on presidential powers, President Museveni has actually been gaining more powers than he had before 1995.

Once the presidential term limits were lifted in 2005 that action fundamentally aborted the entire 1995 Constitution.

Because the civil service and armed services have become intertwined with the ruling NRM party – just as they tended to be in the 1960s and 1980s with the ruling UPC party – it’s unrealistic to expect anyone from within the present system to reform it.

So, if the NRM government cannot reform itself and the Opposition is unable to effect the reforms, what options are possible?

One option would be reforms initiated and overseen by the West. This is an important option because, over the years, it has been consistently clear that the West is the only entity effective enough in containing or countering the Museveni government. It is the only checks and balances on the NRM, so to speak.

Under sustained pressure from the key Western donor nations, including loan and aid cuts, political reforms could then be introduced in the same way the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1987 required Uganda to accept a Structural Adjustment Programme as a precondition for further funding.

Reforms would include contracting foreigner citizens to head such institutions as the Electoral Commission, the Uganda police, and the Supreme Court.

A foreigner’s insulation from domestic politics might at this stage be the only hope for a degree of neutrality in decision-making.

Some of this existed during the NRM government’s early years.

The triumphant guerrilla leader Yoweri Museveni took the oath of office in January 1986, administered by the British-born Chief Justice Peter Allen.

When the Uganda Revenue Authority was formed in 1991, its first commissioner general, Edward Larbi-Siaw, was Ghanaian, succeeded by a Swede, Annebritt Aslund, not to mention the fact that the new government-owned newspaper founded in March 1986, New Vision, was headed for 20 years starting in September 1986 by a Briton, William Pike.

Foreign heads of these key institutions during the first five years of the NRM government helped give it international credibility and some measure of domestic legitimacy.

The Judiciary would need to start feeling confidence in itself and its status as the third formal branch of State.

The Supreme Court should be prepared to make the ultimate ruling – annulling the results of a general election where sufficient evidence of malpractice is deduced by a petition from a losing side.

Short of a political Structural Adjustment Programme imposed by the West, Uganda’s present political and electoral system, I think, can only be reformed from within by an extreme event.