Why the UPC will not field a presidential candidate in 2021
Top officials in the Uganda People’s Congress-UPC have consensed not to field a Presidential candidate in the forthcoming general elections after Party President Jimmy Akena opted to run for Lira East Municipality legislative seat.
According to the UPC party constitution, under Article 13 provides that the sitting party president elected by the party delegates conference becomes the party flag bearer in a general election. Akena who was elected unopposed on 1st August at delegates conference which has received a lot of criticism and stick from other party members.
This a consecutive time that the former giants UPC have failed to field a candidate for the Uganda’s highest office. And the last Presidential candidates from the party being Miria Kalule Obote and Olara Otunu in 2006 and 2011 respectively with dismal performances every UPC cadre would prefer to forget, imagine Otunu did not even show up on the polling day.
The party has since lost its glory and its death may be inevitable, the numbers of Parliamentary seats owned by the UPC have since dropped from 10 in the 9th Parliament to a frail 7 in the 10th, and with such a sequence you expected a serious drop in the next term.
This is not unique to parliamentary seats but even other elective offices, the party is not visible elsewhere in the country except in the North where it is significantly losing favor to the National Resistance Movement, Democratic Party and Forum for Democratic Change who are mobilizing bigger numbers in once indomitable region of the UPC.
What may have gone wrong for a party that once bore Uganda’s second longest serving President Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, is it funds, lack of organization or the party is simply losing its grip and popularity.
