UGMP Analysis of Presidential Candidates Manifestos Launched by Civil Society.

Published By UNNGOF |  February 19, 2016

On 13th February 2016, an analysis of the Manifestos of Presidential Candidates, bench-marking them against the issues in the Citizens’ Manifesto was launched under the auspices of the Uganda Governance Monitoring Platform at a press conference at the Uganda National NGO Forum offices.

After generating citizens’ dreams, aspirations, needs and expectations through an illustrious citizens manifesto process in 2010 and in 2015, two landmark documents – the Citizens Manifesto of 2011 – 2016 and that of 2016 – 2021 were developed. These documents present a diagnosis of Uganda’s problems and possible pathways out of the challenges of development in broad areas of Economics, Politics and Governance, Society, Service Delivery and Foreign Policy.

Under each of the broad areas are specific demands, expectations or commitments of citizens from the citizens’ manifestos of 2011 and 2016 have highlighted. In total, there are about 25 demands or issues of focus.

This analysis is a narrow assessment of the promises contained in the manifestos of the 7 candidates (Candidate Mabirizi’s manifesto was unavailable at the time) in as far as they relate to the Citizen Manifesto analysis, demands, expectations and promises. It therefore should not be read as a broad comparative analysis of the strengths of the presidential manifestos or their efficacy.

Overall, the analysis reveals that most of the candidates’ manifestos have good ideas that if implemented could advance Uganda’s socioeconomic and political transformation agenda. All make a good attempt at answering the ‘what’ question – meaning they list down a lot of what needs to be done in a kind of wish list but with no clear idea of the strategies to arrive at them. Some of the manifestos go deeper than others in terms of analysis but only three make good ground in the articulating and responding to the ‘how’ question – meaning they go in some detail in showing strategies of delivering on what they promise.

Perhaps most important to note is that each and every manifesto of the presidential candidates does have good ideas and whoever wins should consider consulting and taking on positive ideas and plans from others candidates’ manifestos. After all, they all aim to uplift the welfare of Ugandans.

The detailed analysis of the presidential manifestos can be found at – https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_grEoxUoMy3YmdmUXMtdE80T00/view?usp=sharing

Read more about UGMP at – http://ngoforum.or.ug/uganda-governance-monitoring-plaform/

You can find the 2016 Citizens’ Manifesto here – http://ngoforum.or.ug/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2015/11/Citizen-Manifesto-2016-2021LR.pdf