On March 9, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) launched its party’s policy agenda that, according to its president, the public should view as “a contract to create a new dispensation and build a new foundation for creating opportunities for all and bring about boundless opportunities and shared prosperity.”

The four-point policy agenda includes a plan to invest in people and expand opportunities for every Ugandan; a plan to re-engineer new sources of growth and create well-paying and decent jobs; a plan to strengthen national security, create a new leadership and strengthen the public service; and a plan to build a people-centred regional integration and global partnerships.

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How do you assess the reaction of the public to your party’s policy agenda that you launched two weeks ago?

I am really excited and glad that it has created the kind of responses that we have been receiving because at least we have already won one battle that is very clear in my mind. Nobody can argue anymore that FDC does not have a policy agenda. So, now we can engage in the issues within the agenda.

The public had almost become convinced that our main purpose is to remove President Museveni for the sake of it, which is far from the truth. His removal is a by-the-way: We want to take power and use it to implement the policy agenda that we have always had. We spent one and a half years reviewing it and when it was ready we presented it to the public.

The agenda is scant on compelling detail about how its four action points will be implemented.

The policy agenda cannot go into too much detail. We are going to draw up the manifesto, which will have more details in the different areas that we will focus on. We intend to launch it by October because the campaigns will start about that time and the manifesto will be unveiled by the flag bearer as the rallying point for campaigning in the country.

READ: Uganda's FDC party launches strategy ahead of 2016 elections

How do your campaign plans augur with all the ongoing discussions about fielding a joint candidate? Is that all mere talk?

The launch of our policy agenda has got nothing to do with whether we want to go it alone or not. It is simply part of the process of building strength in FDC, which should be the case with other parties. Unless you bring together such internal strength, how will you take power?

There is a large section of the opposition who think having a joint candidate is good. We also believe that way. The parties that come into co-operation must agree on what they are going to do when you take power. When you field a candidate, he or she must have a manifesto around which they rally the country.

Where else will you get it? It is from the policy agendas of the different parties. So, when it becomes necessary for us to integrate different agendas to build a minimum programme, then we can draw from what each party has presented so that each feels they have been fairly and well represented.

Some of your party members do not believe FDC should be wasting time and effort on formulating policy. As they see it, Uganda does not lack well thought-out policies but rather, effective leadership to implement them.

We think differently because, you see, for you to oust the incumbent you need to rally support from the population, and there is a section of them that needs to know who you are, what you want to do.

So, how will you rally them unless you are able to review your policies or formulate them where need be and then you convince the public that we are focusing on the ousting of Museveni in order to do one, two, three, four things.

If you do not launch your own policy agenda, then you will be stuck in the perception that the regime has been trying to create for a long time. Literally, you will be playing into the hands of Museveni, who keeps repeating that we have no policies and we are just after ousting him.

Talking about leadership, yours remains contested three years after you won your party presidency. Some of your members claim not to see what you have been up to over that time and so accuse you of affecting FDC’s energy and visibility. Is this the price one has to pay for reorienting the party?

READ: FDC leaders avoid discussing Muntu’s leadership style

There are a number of things that we are engaged in that are not exciting or even necessarily visible, such as policy formulation and branch building, but they are important as building blocks. There is no way you can build the strength and capability of an organisation unless you do those.

When you do them effectively, then you can go into exciting things like rallies or whatever you want to do. But if you go into rallies, which tend to excite people, without doing the things that are not necessarily exciting, you will remain hanging up there and you will be decimated. So, I don’t really mind about colleagues who think different. I just concentrate on what I think is right, what needs to be done, and I maintain focus on that.

I wish that those who have a different approach to doing things would also concentrate on that. I don’t contest the views they espouse and I don’t think they are in conflict. They are complementary.

I have never at any point, not in private not in public, contested the other methods which are being proposed. What beats my understanding is why those who propose those other methods don’t concentrate on them as we concentrate on party building and then they complement each other.

We need to avoid the tendency to attack ourselves because, when you attack your members, you create weakness because you create doubt in the public’s mind.

The FDC has vied for the presidency twice without success. Its candidate in both races has actually competed thrice. A lot of people are frustrated and apathetic about your politics. What is your game plan to turn this around?

There are people that I know who are frustrated because of the environment in which we have been operating. It is understandable, the levels of frustration; people have been expecting change but it simply does not come.

However, as leaders, there are things that you must do even if the population does not understand them at times because you cannot afford to be frustrated. If you do, then you lose focus, yet you must remain focused to do things to be able to achieve success in life wherever you are, whether in business or politics. So, I understand why some of our people are frustrated.

Things like going down and building a party infrastructure and trying to organise people around the policy, they think they are laborious. They do not attract a lot of support because they are not visible, planning for them sometimes they are even boring, but they are things that must be done by a leader who wants to win, however laborious they may seem.

How do you assess your strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

We are on the right side of history. The things we are doing are right and we are operating in an environment where people are increasingly questioning the status quo. It might not be evident but we hear that a lot in our engagements and it creates an environment within which we can influence people to come to our side.

As the dynamics of change in society show, always you will find two kinds of forces: One that is ascending and the other that is descending. In historical terms, the Movement is a descending force even if it may not immediately appear as such. We are an ascending force. So as long as we keep doing the right things we will keep building strengths and we will take power.

A lot of people believe the army, which you headed for nine years, holds the key to power in Uganda. Anyone who seeks to rule cannot do so without its support. What inroads have you made there?

The officers and men in the army are not stupid as most people think. Many of them are educated and highly trained. They are capable of analysis. They can read the trends of the times. They can see when a population shifts. That is why for me the concentration is not on the army, the police or intelligence services but on the population. If there is a visible, significant shift there, it will be read by those in the security services and they will follow.

Those people have a future. They are intelligent. I served with many of them. They have served in many countries that are failed states. Don’t think those lessons are lost on them, that they cannot see when a country fails to function and the consequences of that. I do not think that they want to see Uganda get to that.

So, the moment they see a shift in the population and have trust in those who will be able to replace the current regime, they are sure they are capable of holding the country together and actually running it better. They are not stupid; they will want to invest in a future that is stable and that will benefit them and their children.

So, I don’t want to go into the contestation over the influence of the army now. The contestation is in shifting the dynamics of politics in the population and that becomes a significant factor in our influencing the army. The moment you achieve your objective in shifting the population, then you can start working on the security services because these trends will not be lost on them.

How do you assess your progress on this objective?

The biggest challenge we face is the mind-set of the population. People are disempowered. They actually do not think they have the capacity to remove a government. They do not understand power relations. People do not actually realise that they have got power over their leaders. They think it is the leaders that have power over them. It is a struggle. It is an intense one that we must keep working at until we change those power relations at least at the level of understanding.

The other unfortunate thing is that the elite who could be doing that on a nonpartisan basis are unplugged from the process. The majority are simply focused on their own survival. They, too, do not understand that politics is at the core of the stability of any society. They do not understand that whatever else happens there must be a firm foundation on the basis of which everyone is able to function in whatever they do. The moment that foundation gives way, you all sink.

We have seen many countries that are in turmoil. Now, that seems not to sink into the minds of a big chunk of the elite. Somehow, they stand on the sidelines and leave the politics to someone else.