28.06.2010 

By Our London Reporter 

The Inter Party Cooperation [IPC], a loose coalition of Ugandan opposition parties that wants to unseat President Museveni’s ruling NRM government in the general elections scheduled for February 2011 seems to be on a relentless forward march.  The partners in the IPC, it will be recalled, are the Forum for Democratic Change [FDC], Uganda People’s Congress [UPC], the Conservative Party [CP], Jeema, and the Social Democratic Party [SDP]; the last to have joined the alliance.

Last week, Uganda Correspondent reported that an organisation calling itself the “IPC Volunteer Corps” had launched a campaign for political change in Uganda on the social networking site Facebook.  See “IPC Volunteer Corps” launch campaign for change” in the “National” news section of our website.  The group churned out a barrage of simple but emotive messages that appear to have been carefully crafted to appeal to the patriotic emotions of every ordinary Ugandan; urging them to join the IPC in resisting Museveni’s dictatorship, to resist the Kiggundu-led Electoral Commission, and to generally support its struggle for democratic change.    

This week, a group of UK based Ugandan opposition political activists have also launched what they called “The Uganda Inter Party Coalition Group-UK”.  At a meeting held at LAS PALMERAS Restaurant in Stockwell-South West London on Saturday 26^th June 2010, Dr. Vincent Magombe, a UK based Journalist and Political Analyst said this group’s approach is basically “a bottom up approach.  They believe in and support what the IPC is trying to achieve back home.  So they feel that they don’t really need permission from the IPC Secretariat in Uganda before they join in the struggle for democracy in our country”.

The group’s concept paper and vision that is doing the rounds in the UK at the moment declares that, “we the members of the Uganda Group-UK believe that all Ugandan pro-democracy activists and campaigners, both at home and abroad, should work together in the struggle to peacefully transform Uganda into a truly democratic, politically stable, economically prosperous, and socio-culturally cohesive and progressive nation.  We believe that the violence, harassment, intimidation and repression meted against pro-democracy campaigners in Uganda must stop forthwith in order to enable a peaceful transformation of our motherland Uganda into a fully-fledged democracy”.

So what exactly does this group hope to achieve by setting up shop in the UK.  Not very different from what the NRM UK and Ireland Chapter, FDC UK Chapter, DP UK Chapter, and UPC’s External Bureau in the UK have tried to achieve with varying degrees of success over the years is the answer.  They have all tried to mobilise Ugandans in the UK as well as influence UK government foreign policy on Uganda to favour their respective political agendas.  The Uganda Inter Party Coalition Group-UK therefore declared its objectives as being to, among other things: 

• Mobilise and organise Diaspora-Ugandans so as to advance their political activism for the purpose of causing positive democratic transformation at home. 
• To make strategic interventions in the form of lobbying activities, petition writing, critical media commentaries, etc, with the view to influencing foreign government policies, as well as the global media trajectory on topical Ugandan political matters. 
• Set up an operational infrastructure for the Uganda Inter Party Coalition Group-UK. 
• In light of the Democracy / Electoral Reform document published by the Uganda-based IPC members, identify and proactively campaign on the most urgent and pertinent issues there-in – e.g., Electoral Reform, ‘demilitarisation’ of politics and all election-related processes, freedom of the media / expression, etc. 
• Establish direct linkages with Inter-Party Coalition [IPC] activists and other pro-democracy campaigners at home and across the world in order to cooperatively and strategically tackle the problems at hand. 
• Fundraise for the cause of Inter-Party political activism in Uganda and for the purposes of realising the IPC’s set goals and aspirations. 

And it seems, this group, being foreign based, also felt the need to make a statement about their patriotism because their document ended with an adapted version of Uganda’s national proclamation and or motto “For God and Our Country”.