In football, an own goal looks like action, noise, and movement, but it benefits the opponent. In politics, voting without careful assessment can feel like a “protest vote” while actually reinforcing the very system voters want to dismantle. That is the trap many are walking into today: voting for candidates branded as “opposition” who are, in practice, Museveni’s safest state agents.
President Museveni has never relied on blunt force alone. His strength has always been long-term calculation. When he said there would be “no opposition” by 2021, it sounded arrogant, even dismissible. Yet reality has followed his method, not his words.
Instead of banning the opposition, he absorbed, neutralised, fragmented, and replaced it. Senior opposition figures were weakened or pushed out, not only by repression but by internal decay and strategic missteps that played perfectly into his hands. What replaced them was not a stronger opposition, but a noisier, thinner one.
The most dangerous expression of this strategy is managed opposition, candidates dressed in opposition colours but politically harmless to the regime. Museveni learned long ago that in regions where people are disgusted by NRM and its yellow, they will vote “anything against it.” The response was simple and effective: repackage trusted loyalists and controllable actors in opposition colours, while leaving NRM with deliberately weak candidates. The result is devastatingly clever: anti-regime votes still deliver power to regime-aligned individuals. Voters feel victorious, yet Museveni wins.
This danger is magnified when voters abandon scrutiny and vote purely on symbols, slogans, and anger. Party colours, chants, and youthful energy are not substitutes for competence, independence, or courage. When a party gives out cards to candidates with doubtful qualifications, weak records, and no ideological grounding, while sidelining seasoned politicians who understand the system, it is not renewal; it is political disarmament.
Dropping “masters of the game” in favour of dense, malleable youthful lots does not threaten authoritarian power; it simplifies control. Museveni has already done this inside NRM to prepare a future dominated by command and obedience. When the opposition mirrors this pattern, it is not resisting the system, it is copying it.
This is how an own goal is scored. Voters reject Museveni emotionally, but elect people who will never confront him institutionally. They celebrate “opposition victories” that translate into silence in Parliament, compliance in committees, and surrender when pressure is applied. The regime does not need to rig much in such an environment; the choices themselves are already safe.
The advisory is simple but urgent: do not vote on anger alone. Do not vote on colour, noise, or party symbols. Assess the candidate’s background, independence, consistency, courage under pressure, and intellectual capacity to resist co-optation. Ask who benefits if this person wins. If that question is uncomfortable, pause.
Otherwise, Ugandans risk waking up after the election celebrating what feels like victory, only to realise they handed power back to Museveni’s system with their own vote.
Kaweesa Kaweesa is the Chairman, Democratic Front, Mukono District.
