The increasing number of political parties in Uganda are negatively affecting the citizens as most of them, if not all, are either formed for baseless competition or for personal benefits, but not for the well being of the country.
If the political parties keep on increasing, it means that the word opposition will lose value as the opposition is meant to advise the Government in power but it seems like they have turned into business ventures.
This will make a country stay behind both in development and Service delivery since there is no one to honestly advise.
In September 2023, The Uganda Electoral Commission listed 26 registered political parties on it’s Website,as of now Uganda has at least seven commonly Known political parties and most of them are giving birth to other political parties which is likely to favour the political party in power because these parties will have to share the votes from their different supporters.
The chairman of NRM has played on the minds of Ugandans and allowed the Launch of the Patriotic League of Uganda which is simply meant to confuse other politicians.
This party (The Patriotic League of Uganda ) has everything that it takes to win the elections as these people are well resourced financially and they even have strong support from both the military and the police.
Instead of the existing political parties cooperating so that they perform very well in the coming general elections,they have resorted to fighting themselves.
This has created a lot of confusion among Ugandans hence their loss of interest in some political parties.
The only way to solve this is that all the opposition parties should come together and find a way of handling their different disagreement, but some of them are too proud to do so.
The coming of Political Parties started with the Democratic Party (DP) in 1956 but since then, no opposition party has ever won a presidential election.
But it is surprising that our leaders are forming more political parties every now and then, yet they are adding nothing to the country.
In 1960 there was a split in the UNC party which led to the formation of the Uganda People’s Congress after Musaazi and Obote agreeing to work together.
The unnecessary formation of political parties has shifted the opposition agenda and now it looks like the parties in opposition are opposing themselves and not the government in power.
Political parties had been banned in 1986 until in 2005 when the pro democracy forces won the multiparty referendum.
They had been banned from competing in elections for nearly 20 years in order to curb the sectarian tensions and from then, Uganda was under the Non Party Movement System of Governance, which was instituted by Yoweri Museveni when he came in power in 1986.
Very many people will continue to be kidnapped and imprisoned due to the competition and the hatred that is coming in politics because most of the upcoming political parties are as a result of small misunderstandings among a few politicians.
But the question remains, If since the existing Political Parties have failed to win the NRM government ever since they were allowed to operate legally in 2005, do you think the creation of other new political parties will help in dislodging this current government?
When you take a glimpse in our neighbouring countries like Rwanda, they have at least eight political parties and the country is more stable than us who have close to thirty (30) political parties.
The increase of political parties will not only lead to more political instability cases in our country, but also the economic situation is likely to worsen since the money that is usually used in forming these parties is always attained from government in an illegal way.
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