The results of the recent election of village leaders in Uganda, a few hundred thousand in all, are now out.

True to the party’s pre-election predictions, across the country, President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement won an overwhelming majority of the positions up for grabs.

Not the most restrained of boasters, some NRM officials are crowing about how their “thunderous victory” has put the opposition, whose leaders they are now dismissing as opportunists, to shame. There is more than just a little bit of truth in this.

Shame must be what many will be feeling after losing in 120 out of 122 districts, to a ruling party that, along with its leadership, the intelligentsia like to portray as no longer popular.

One must ask what happened for the large numbers of voters in supposed opposition strongholds to elect NRM candidates as their grassroots leaders.

The question becomes especially pertinent where they defeated rivals from opposition parties in areas that traditionally vote for opposition candidates in presidential and parliamentary contests.

Putting a brave face on the debacle, some opposition spokespeople have made it known that their parties don’t care that the NRM won, or that it won so decisively.

I am not sure there are many out there who believe them. But if they really don’t care, then at least they ought to feel concerned.

Several reasons would justify that sentiment. For one thing, tens of thousands of NRM candidates were elected unopposed. Opposition parties simply couldn’t raise the necessary candidates. It means they are not present on the ground, or that very few people feel it is worthwhile running for office under their banner.

Both are serious matters. They throw into doubt their individual or collective viability as alternatives to the NRM.

Perhaps even more significant is that, after what observers agree were dishonest, albeit ultimately successful, manoeuvres by the NRM leadership to amend the Constitution to remove the presidential age limit, a view emerged that Ugandans were extremely unhappy and would punish Museveni at the earliest possible opportunity.

Unpopular taxes

There was never going to be a better opportunity than elections. It is now clear that the anger Ugandans were said to feel was either overly exaggerated, or it has long dissipated.

Equally significant is that the elections came on the heels of a huge controversy about the government’s decision to impose unpopular taxes on social media and mobile money transactions.

Even these seem not to have angered the voting public enough for them to seek to punish the NRM.

If I were an opposition leader presiding over a party that I would like to defeat the NRM one day, I would not take all this lightly or even seek to brush it aside.

Incumbency

And really it is not only opposition politicians or leaders that should be concerned. Ordinary Ugandans who look beyond the immediate present and focus on the future, ought to worry.

No doubt, one reason NRM did so well is because of the several advantages it enjoys as the incumbent. Not only does it have the entire machinery of the state at its disposal, it is also able to mobilise funds from many sources that, for all sorts of reasons, are not available to opposition parties.

And since in Uganda it is candidates who hand out money and gifts, some of it given to them by the party they are fronting, who tend to win. Again, incumbency is important, not least because the NRM is de facto fused with the state, which gives it the ability to support its candidates in ways that opposition parties cannot possibly do.

There is also the fact that, for 20 years, between 1986 and 2005, using legal and other measures, NRM confined political parties to their offices in Kampala.

That prevented them from recruiting of new members or renewing their leadership. And then in 2005, political parties were ostensibly freed to contest for power with NRM. In reality, however, new ways were found to make it difficult for them to grow.

The post-2005 political parties have therefore had to deal with the reality of having mainly new leaders with limited experience and space to do those things that make political parties strong: Define and articulate their ideologies; recruit committed members; and raise resources, including from membership subscriptions, to fund their activities and programmes across the entire country.

Therefore the playing field on which the well-organised and well-funded NRM competes with its rivals is anything but level.

And truth be told, perhaps as a result of the commercialisation or monetisation of politics, especially since 2005, many Ugandans, in rural areas especially, have grown to expect politicians and political parties to give them money. Very few give any money to the political parties they claim to support.

And so the opposition is condemned to stay broke and unable to buy support. This should not be of concern to only opposition politicians.

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