The National Unity Platform has dispelled reports of fissures within the party. Instead the party leadership, in office for a barely two-year-old party, has linked the talk of division to propaganda instigated by the regime. They say the target is to understand the ongoings within the party.

Following a meeting held quietly by the members of the National Unity Platform on Wednesday last week at One Love Beach in Busabala, Wakiso district, there is growing speculation of divisions within the National Unity Platform.
 
 The NUP leadership has since vehemently dismissed reports of a fracture between the party’s parliamentary caucus headed by Mathias Mpuuga, and the secretariat led by Robert Kyagulanyi.
 
 “It is absolute nonsense. It is not true that NUP has any divisions. There is a cordial relation between the Members of Parliament and the secretariat,” NUP's Secretary-General, Mr David Lewis Rubongoya told NTV.

Mpuuga blames silence about the Busabala deliberations for the reports about a fissure in the party. Instead, Mpuuga contends that the Busabala meeting was purposed to review the last six months of the performance of the party in parliament.
 
He then claims that reports of a fissure are nothing more than propaganda manufactured by the state machinery.
 
 “The unending attempts by the state to have a peek into what we were doing is what, perhaps, informs. If you read the news story without a byline, it confirms that somebody sat somewhere to try and ferment conflict in the NUP,” the leader of Opposition in parliament, Mr Mathias Mpuuga says.
 
 However, a political scholar at Kyambogo University Juma Sultan Kakuba says divisions within the National Unity Platform are inevitable.
 
 His reasoning is grounded in the advantage of the party wave taken by opportunistic individuals for political survival, at a time when the party was still establishing itself.
 
 “There is politics of convenience. People look at politics as a means for survival. People look for where they survive better. NUP helped a lot of people gain political positions,” Dr Juma Sultan Kakuba a political scholar told NTV.

 The lack of a concrete ideology by the party is an issue too.
 
 “For a party to be strong, people must know the value and ideology. They must respect the constitution of their party. Recruiting from other political parties is normal when they are convinced that the party they are joining has a better ideology from where they are,” Dr Kakuba says.
 
“I am not aware of anybody born with an ideology. It is fostered, propelled, oriented across and developed. Ugandans are not used to party orientations which is why they think that an ideology is like rocket science,” Mpuuga says.
 
 To strengthen the party, Kakuba says the party's survival will hinge on its elected Members of Parliament engaging actively with the structures, to ensure cohesion and a solid constitution and mutual respect by the top brass of the party.