At the height of "operation freedom; bringing democracy and freedom to the people of Iraq," the then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, when asked if democracy and freedom had been achieved in Iraq, said; "there are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns- the ones we don't know we don't know."

This has been the state of political parties in Uganda. The NRM and the sets of democratic principles they subscribe to, have remained an enigma; and in Rumsfeldian speak, ' unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we don't know.'

For a society to politically progress, that society should first understand its own system of governance. The problem with Uganda is that political parties have never understood the NRM/A ideology and the "political arena" in which they were coerced into and continue to practise today. In the "opening up of political space" political parties, as always, were hypnotised into believing that the NRM's newly acquired love for multiparty politics meant democracy as we conventionally know it.

Nothing seems to have changed though; the Movement maintains its organs and continues to practise as it always did. Parties on the other hand, are reduced to operate like "castrated bulls" in a kraal with one aggressive dominant bull. So as 2011 draws nearer, we are forced to wonder where political parties and Uganda are headed.

It's no wonder the sycophants, as usual, are already singing his [Museveni] praises to high heavens. Some are whispering sweet "4th term" and "visionary" music to his ears, the kind of music a revolutionary likes to hear. In his last publication titled Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, when writing about the Russian Revolution observed: "a revolution seeks power entirely for its own sake..." Its leaders said, "we are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

Political parties from the very beginning romanticised with the NRM in confronting the 'visibility' of the democratic ideal with the singularity of the NRM/A revolutionary ideology, centred around personality cult, individual merits, put above and beyond the development of democratic institutions. Effectively, helping in the diminishing of democracy to mere "voting" every few years.

It took political parties 20 years to realise that a leopard never changes its spots and so decided that to continue feasting on the carcasses of the leopard's kill, they could themselves end up under claws of the leopard. This is when they were being reminded that "revolutionaries never retire" and that they have never been redeemed by the "revolution" from being "bad leaders"-- the "professionalised army" they were told, is watching.

As long as the "people's revolution" lives on, democracy will always be defined by the NRM/A. Never mind that the political parties have bought into this façade and posturing.

Mr Olara is a human rights advocate in the UK