Uganda’s next general election is a whole two Christmases away, and yet inside the country one could be forgiven for imagining it is just around the corner. There are several reasons for this:

First, believing themselves to be the victims of a combination of election malpractices and bad electoral laws, opposition leaders and activists supported by campaigners for free and fair elections within the civil society world, are busy traversing the country and holding rallies.

A central objective of their meet-the-people campaign, which until recently was a magnet for unwanted attention from law and order organs, is to sensitise members of the public about what the need to pressurise the government to institute reforms they believe are necessary to guarantee that future elections are contested on a level playing field.

Some may criticise them for giving the impression that free and fair elections are a matter simply of good laws and who gets to appoint whoever presides over the polls and how, but that really is beside the point.

At least, they have made the integrity of elections a major subject of discussion, not only among the chattering classes in the towns, but also barefoot peasants in the villages.

While the latter may not always grasp the issues or appreciate what is at stake, the sum total of their efforts may galvanise a sizeable coalition for change and lead to something positive.

Then there is the early jostling for position by individuals seeking to secure party nominations as contestants for parliamentary seats.

Politics in Uganda is highly commercialised, requiring aspirants for elective positions to mobilise vast sums of money in order to win support and secure votes.

Although it carries the risk of burnout and possible impoverishment before actual campaigning starts, early spending can give an aspirant a head start over their rivals.

Which is why rural Uganda is now abuzz with activity as potential candidates go around giving out money to churches and various groups, and making sure that they attend funerals and ask to address mourners.

Meanwhile, newspapers are already bombarding readers with faces of aspirants accompanied by sometimes naïve, sometimes outlandish declarations of what they will do for their constituents if elected, and of incumbents often clearly rattled and on the defensive.

There is also a purely Ugandan phenomenon with no known parallels elsewhere in the region — a certain type of political entrepreneur. They come in two groups, the party hopper and the party blackmailer, and cut across genders and age groups.

Party hopping is a favourite pastime of persons who crave the limelight and the exposure that comes with it, usually accompanied by some form of reward.

When the leader or high-level delegation of a specific party visits where they live, they dress up in the colours of one of the rival parties and carry matching membership cards. During proceedings they declare their defection from the party whose colours they are wearing and their conversion to that of the visitors.

Curiously, they never leave large parties for small ones but exchange one big party for another each time, usually several times over, while collecting whatever benefits there are to collect. Party hopping has started in earnest as politicians step up their visits to the countryside to recruit supporters and agents and try to degrade their rivals’ support bases.

Meanwhile, the party blackmailer is usually young, educated, and unemployed, or in disguised unemployment. They go by such titles as “party mobiliser” for such and such a group or such and such a cause. They also have a tendency to call themselves “the leaders of tomorrow.”

The usually exaggerated sense of their own importance is what underlies their proclivity for seeking to blackmail the political parties to which they belong, or the personalities that lead them.

The blackmail essentially consists of open threats to leave the party en masse or switch their support from one prominent member of the leadership who may be gunning for an elected post within the party, to their rival who may be angling or who may be rumoured to be angling to oust them.

In exchange for their continued loyalty, they will demand hefty sums of money on the grounds that because they are unemployed and poor, they need to invest in income-generating activities to make ends meet.

It is a spectacle that replays itself several times over before a bemused and amused general public. True, this full-time mass immersion in politicking by a sizeable portion of the country’s elite well in advance of elections does have a comical aspect.

However, altogether, it is not without cost to the country. Besides the vast sums of money going into unproductive activities at the expense of more immediately needs, they divert political leaders from the important task of preparing their parties for the national leadership they seek, and the entire political elite from working hand in hand in pursuit of collective solutions to national challenges.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]