By Kassim Sematimba
DP President Norbert Mao used the party’s weekly press conference on Tuesday to explain why and how he was able to beat his opponents during the NDC in Mbarara to remain President General for another five years.
He bragged about the fact that when he first became party president (in 2010), over 80% of people in DP top leadership positions were Baganda, which is no longer the case. He declared his reelection defeat for politics of “provincialism,” which he said his critics have been stuck with for decades.
Mao declared that the door was open for his opponents to accept the fact that he is back for another five years and join him to steer the party forward going into 2026. He said the debate that the Mbarara DNC had generated was indicative of the fact that DP is still a beloved party for millions of Ugandans, which is why so-called online pundits can’t stop discussing his reelection.
Mao then vented and unleashed his resentment onto the NUP party of Bobi Wine Kyagulanyi Ssentamu. He contrasted the quality of elections and internal democracy in DP with what happens or goes on in the National Unity Platform when it comes to democracy and tolerating dissent.
Mao said that whereas DP is open and welcomes positive criticisms, in NUP the same is never tolerated. He said that NUP even doesn’t have delegates even when they claim they are soon going to have a delegates conference. He castigated Bobi Wine’s party for having what he called genetically modified (GMO) delegates who are not organically arrived at through grass root structures election.
He added that, whereas in DP everyone including himself faces competition, the NUP big man doesn’t tolerate opponents. Mao said that recently when NUP pretended to be having internal democracy by opening up, certain positions were ring-fenced and no one would be permitted to compete for them.
He gave the example of Party President Bobi Wine, Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya and Benjamin Katana. Mao claimed that the NUP EMC pretended to be opening up everything but nominations were declared closed the moment the trio got nominated.
Mao also claimed that the NUP party has a fake Constitution, which is an outcome of fraudulent alterations, and wondered why the Electoral Commission doesn’t crack the whip and sanction Kavule for breaching clear and unambiguous provisions of the law. Mao said that ideally, the party should be de-registered for committing so much fraud.
He also wondered why NUP wasn’t using its numbers in Parliament to adequately publicize Buganda Kingdom’s causes since 55 out of its 57 MPs come from Buganda. He said there are issues like land grabbing and the regime’s failure to meaningfully revive Cooperatives, which would impact Buganda but the NUP leadership isn’t deliberately being outspoken about them.
Mao said there is a lot NUP is doing and getting away with without being subjected to harsh media scrutiny simply because Bobi Wine compromised majority of the media actors long time ago.
In contrast, Mao wondered why small mistakes and excesses exhibited by the DP leadership are instead magnified and relied upon to call him out over them and other DP leaders. He said that God will one day punish the Ugandan media practitioners for playing such double standards.
