Opposition wants joint candidate to compete with NRM at each level

A cocktail of opposition parties; Norbert Mao’s Democratic Party, Michael Mabike’s Social Democratic Party (SDP) and Abed Bwanika’s people’s Development Party (PDP) have vowed to raise one flag bearer to compete with the ruling National Resistance Movement at all levels, from Presidency to Local Council elections.

Last week, the three parties agreed to a merger in a move aimed at boosting their political influence ahead of the 2021 general elections.

Speaking to journalists in Kampala on Tuesday, political leaders in the respective parties reiterated their intention to unseat the NRM by fronting a join candidate at different elections.

“We did a research that has helped us to come up with a winning strategy, we want to present one opposition candidate against every NRM candidate,” PDP’s Bwanika said.

“We are going to focus on the presidential, parliamentary and Local Government, it is that model that will help us increase our membership in parliament. Actually that model will help us take over the whole parliament,” SDP’s Mabike added.

According to Bwanika, the group will continue engaging with different opposition parties to embrace the idea.

“We are already talking to some of them, and we are going to talk to others. We are not going to wait for 2020 to begin,” Bwanika said.

In preparation for the 2016 elections, parties came together under the The Democratic Alliance (TDA), which sought a sole candidate to outcompete NRM’s Yoweri Museveni.

However, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) would later pull out leaving the rest of the parties to choose former prime minister Patrick Amama Mbabazi, who became a distant third in the race, scoring a miserable 1.39 per cent.