What does the road ahead look like for FDC party?

“Until the process we have initiated [concludes], we are still FDC members,” Mr Lukwago hastened to add.

The response from the FDC Najjanankumbi faction was to question the move, arguing that legally, their erstwhile colleagues in Katonga can’t dissolve the party.

“How can a group of people sit somewhere and dissolve something they are not part of,” Hassan Kaps Fungaroo, the Najjanankumbi vice president-in-charge of northern Uganda, said.  

Patrick Amuriat Oboi, his party president, reiterated that thesis during a media briefing on Wednesday in which he questioned the legal abilities of Lukwago, who has been practicing law for more than two decades.

“These fun makers in Katonga have not renewed their membership in the last four years. They are, therefore, not members of FDC. They do not have the legal locus and authority to make decisions on behalf of the FDC,” Mr Amuriat said, adding: “Those who have behaved like thugs cannot be allowed here. This is the official premises of FDC, where authorised meetings are held. Erias Lukwago is not permitted to enter my office. If he considers himself the party president, he should come here.”  

Is this entirely a legal question?

Although the Najjanankumbi faction wants everyone that cares to listen to believe that this is a legal question, political observers reckon that it should be taken as a political move rather than a legal one.

“This has nothing to do with who is right legally and who is not. What the Katonga faction is doing is to frame their move politically by saying we are forming another political entity away from what was known as FDC,” Mwambutsya Ndebesa, an academic, told Saturday Monitor. “Political parties are not determined by law, but they are determined by the kind of traction they get from the public. You can’t force a political party onto the people. If they don’t like it, then it will fizzle out.”

In fact, the Katonga faction abandoned the case they filed at the High Court’s Civil Division therein asking to stop the delegates conference that the Najjanankumbi faction had organised. Justice Musa Ssekaana ruled against the Katonga faction.  

“He walked away from us and announced that his ruling would be delivered by email in the evening. We waited until we went to sleep without his email ruling. We were told the following morning that he had delivered his ruling at midnight,” Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the spokesperson of the Katonga faction, said of Justice Ssekaana, adding: “His conduct makes it look like a favour by judges to hear cases. We will raise this matter formally to him and his supervisors. This is not just for us but for everybody seeking justice in our court system.”

The Najjanankumbi faction has had the rub of the green in court. It also scored a legal win when an extraordinary delegates conference organised by Katonga faction National Chairman Waswa Biriggwa was red-flagged. 

The order that Justice Esta Nambayo gave stemmed from an application that the Katonga faction insisted was filed by Najjanankumbi proxies but they didn’t attach Biriggwa, the convener of the delegates conference.

“[Nathan] Nandala [Mafabi, FDC Najjanankumbi faction secretary general] and Amuriat, who have become masters of forgery and fraud, sued themselves through their agents. Any judge worth the title should have observed that those who went to court and those they took were the same. That is why all that happened before Judge Nambayo was raising the case and immediate consent by the other party,” Mr Ssemujju said.

So, what is the next course of action for the Najjanankumbi faction?

Dr Besigye dropped the greatest hint yet that a breakaway was inevitable. After the losses in court, he said “we need to move on from this kind of thing.” Adding: “Those who are saying we should remain with Najjanankumbi aren’t serious.” That was last year. 

Dr Besigye made it clear that the Katonga faction “should be moving forward.” But the political mobilisation that they undertook this year to test the reception of a split didn’t quite yield the results the Katonga faction craved. It, for instance, failed to gain traction in Mafabi’s Bugisu Sub-region, where the support of the likes of former Mbale Municipality MP Jack Wamanga Wamai appears to count for nothing. A lukewarm crowd greeted Dr Besigye when he made a stopover in Bugisu Sub-region.

Elsewhere, Mr Amuriat’s Teso Sub-region also appears to be out of the reach of the Katonga faction. Even the Soroti District Woman Representative, Anna Ebaju Adeke, has opted not to publicly back the Katonga bloc, thanks to the threat of reprisal in the sub-region where Mr Amuriat has assumed the role of a kingmaker.

In the Acholi Sub-region, the only allies that the Katonga group managed to get were Betty Aol Ocan, the Gulu City Woman MP, and Denis Onekalit Amere, the Kitgum Municipality lawmaker. 

In western Uganda, the Katonga faction found Kasese to be a minefield.  

“We have sacrificed a lot for this party and we love it very much. My prayer is that we let us try to resolve the differences amicably because an alternative would weaken the party,” an FDC member said last year when Dr Besigye visited the district and tabled his plans.  

The Najjanankumbi faction has also been involved in political mobilisation of its own. It organised rallies in all parts of Uganda except the sub-regions of Ankole and Kigezi. 

What does the road to 2026 look like for both factions?

Nandala-Mafabi has already declared his intentions to stand for president in 2026. For the Katonga faction, plans are already in high gear to mobilise and they have made attempts to reconcile with people who had fallen out with Nandala-Mafabi. These include Ingrid Turinawe, who, together with Ssemujju, will be leading the faction’s mobilisation drive, according to our sources.

“I have never seen Ssemujju so engaged with political party activities like has been in this case. He is leading from the front,” a source familiar with the Katonga faction’s plans, said.  

When the Katonga faction declared its plans, Mr Amuriat said “drastic measures” will be taken if his former colleagues continued with plans to dissolve FDC.

“The FDC party is not going to tolerate fun makers and clowns playing with the blood and sacrifice of people,” Mr Amuriat said.  

Mr Ssemujju responded with a veiled dig.

“Until this point, I didn’t know that Amuriat was a wise man,” Mr Ssemujju said.

It remains to be seen whether the Katonga faction will field a candidate in the 2006 presidential election. Dr Besigye is on record saying President Museveni cannot countenance losing a presidential poll. Dr Besigye, who between 2001 and 2016 lost four times at the ballot against Mr Museveni, has said elections in Uganda are a ritualistic coronation of the incumbent.

Clearly, we have not heard the last of this standoff as 2026 comes within eyeshot. There is evidently no love lost between the two factions.