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Satire: Mao to quit before DP’s 70th birthday?
What you need to know:
- Also, DP is the same age as Jackie Chan. He was also born in 1954.
Democratic Party (DP) members want their party president to throw in the towel as the party approaches its 70th anniversary.
Yes, DP is 70 years old. This means it is a septuagenarian, which is a fancy way of saying the party has to wake up and ease itself in the middle of the night.
Also, DP is the same age as Jackie Chan. He was also born in 1954.
Chan speaks several languages; namely Mandarin, Cantonese, English, German, Korean, Japanese, Thai and American Sign Language. Sadly, DP is only fluent in electoral defeats.
But let us not overact. To many of the DP faithful, the name Mao could be a corruption of the acronym “MOU.” They are almost spelt the same.
In fact, it is rumoured that MUO is short for “Mzee Uses Oppositionists” or “Mzee Uploads Opportunists”; we cannot be sure which one.
All we can be sure of is that as DP approaches its 70th anniversary in Ugandan politics, there is only one Mzee in our politics. And no matter how old DP gets, nobody and nothing can out-Mzee Mzee in the Mzee-est department.
So if DP thought we would be calling it Mzee, it has to think twice. Maybe we can call it Mzee-Kijana because it already has the adolescent signs of being old enough to give birth to yet another party.
Its party’s president has been its president for the last 15 years, which makes his presidency even older than the National Unity Platform.
He was 18 when the National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to power, which means he is three years away from seeing his presidency becoming as old as he was when he first started disliking the NRM.
It was this dislike by the DP president which made him say "the higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind" when describing the NRM’s ability to climb trees without its underpants on.
We wonder if the DP boss is still watching that “behind”. If he is, then we admire his ability to lead from “behind”.
Some party members argue that DP has lost its way, however.
Critics believe that Mao’s leadership, particularly his decision to align with the ruling NRM, has weakened the party to the extent that the D in DP now stands for deader-than-dead.
Founded in 1954, DP was initially a galvanising force for centre-left Baganda Catholics opposing the petty hegemony of Mengo, the executive seat of Buganda Kingdom politics. DP never seemed to get it together, so to speak.
Also, fact-check: DP’s symbol of a hoe reflected its agricultural roots and its fight for the rights of ordinary Ugandans, and not women of loose morals. But, with the recent political happenings, can anyone surely believe that DP is not “loose”?
DP seems to be there for the taking by the highest bidder, say critics.
“It’s no secret that Mao is more interested in maintaining his Cabinet role than fighting for DP’s ideals,” claimed one DP member.
“Mao has done enough damage,” the member adds. “It’s time for him to go, so DP can rebrand and regain its strength.”
Still, most critics believe that DP’s internal woes will not affect its push to State House in 2026. That is because DP’s efforts to ascend to State House are like the party pushing a door marked “pull”.
The party is not a threat. Even if it were a threat, it would only be a threat to itself.
The DP boss disagrees, though. He is sure that, come 2026, DP’s NRM candidates will win everything and NRM’s DP candidates will be rigged out of power like this was 1980.
DP-green is unripe yellow, after all.
“I am committed to DP and its values,” the DP boss says, “Anyone who opposes this is certainly green on the issues.”
Similarly, the DP king says the party has not been swallowed by its perceived leadership vacuum. Those who do not believe this, he adds, are green with envy and must brighten their otherwise sunny outlook by the yellowest of hues.
Disclaimer: This is a parody column
