Africa-Press – Uganda. ELECTION WATCH 2021 |Wednesday was a big day for five opposition presidential candidates and other political formations, as they signed a declaration of principles committing to collaboration before, during, and after the 2021 elections.Former presidential candidate Col (rtd) Dr Kizza Besigye said: “Regardless of what happens in an election, this must be carried through. We must reconstitute and recollect how this undertaking of the country moves from the beginning to the end.””We must take this effort that Ssemogerere is now making to put together and shepherd with utmost seriousness and commitment. We somehow want to start then we falter, get disorganised and fail. So here, we can give the country hope or we can once again give it a false start,” he said.Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago said the first step of signing the pact is important but they must fast-track the processes of realising the common front.”We can make declarations, we can sign protocols, we can do everything but ultimately what we need is a common front,” he said.Peter Walubiri, who attended the function as the leader of Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) faction, said the principles that their leaders had signed are good but they must be underlined by a commitment to shed off self-interest.It is not the first time opposition leaders have said they are going to work together to remove President Yoweri Museveni from power.During the previous elections, efforts were unsuccessfully made to form a coalition.The parties failed to agree on a joint presidential candidate.Ofwono Opondo, the executive director of the Uganda Media Centre, said: “Remember Ssemogerere’s Inter-Political Forces Co-operation of the 1996 elections, Reform Agenda of 2001 which was a coalition of Democratic Party (DP) and UPC and all the opposition groups in Uganda at the time. By and large, during all the presidential contests we have had we have been having opposition coalitions,” Opondo said.”Forming a government of national unity presupposes that one of them will either win in the first round or in the event that they cannot win in the first round, one of them goes into the second round,” he said.Moses Khisa, an assistant professor of political science at North Carolina State University,said it is unlikely that Forum for Democratic Change will work with the DP.”There is a lot of mistrust and animosity from previous encounters. Internal factional struggles in those two parties run against intra-party cohesion and unity, even before you talk about them collaborating with other parties,” Khisa said.Dr Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a political scientist, said given what has been going on in the opposition political parties, they are likely to remain fragmented.
