The people who brag about their extraordinary abilities least question their disabilities. Yet every person has some strong aptitudes while they are weak in others. The instances of valour, intellect, stamina and strength are pointedly admirable in our society, but they exist surprisingly shoulder to shoulder with tempered slyness, cowardice, subservience and folly in each of us as individuals.

Many of the renowned names in statesmanship and military strategy in our history are not remembered for strumming the harp, even of an old tune.

Names acquire greatness, not because they are a paragon for social virtues, but because during moments of extreme crisis or lapse in a given social activity, they display outstanding skills and qualities of leadership in social endeavour.

By their feats, they earn glory. Strikingly, this is often peddled far beyond their generic natural talents, leading to the glutting of the said individuals with a halo of rectitude and infallibility on a vale of issues.

We often quote a Luganda adage, "Owembaliga awoza amalala" (A person who walks with outwardly aligning feet never admits the defect of his feet; he claims it is due to his proud gait of walking).

The Mbale DP Conference recently elected Norbert Mao as its new leader. The conference was held amidst tremendous recriminations, rocking the party into a number of factions, despite its already general declining fortunes in Uganda's politics.

DP was one of the earliest political organisations in Uganda. Its Catholic support rendered it a formidable political force in 1960, catapulting it into power, albeit briefly, basing on the numerical superiority of the Roman Catholics in the country.

UPC suavely outsmarted DP and eclipsed it out of power in 1962. From then on, DP has been sinking into oblivion from its incapacity to relate with the chequered circumstances of the country. Many years since the NRM rule, DP today sputters dismally from the brink of drowning, hardly a level above its old tormentor, UPC.

The DP Mbale conference was ecstatic at its elevation of Norbert Mao to the helm of its leadership. Some media commentators followed suit, declaring that the face of Mao at the head of DP is the finest moment Ugandans have all along been waiting for.

We now have Mao couched in messianic terms. The impressive flash of media gloss must have served to inflate Mao's own belief in himself. He is now quoted stating that the duty for all the opposition groups is to give him the right of way.

There is nothing unedifying for Mao to try and cut a niche for himself in Uganda's politics. Ultimately, it is defined as his right. But Ugandans who usually endure languishing in the severe migraine of their unresolved situation have no justifiable luxury in toying with political rhetoric.

Uganda is an African country with perennial African problems rooted in its past history. These problems are monumental. They require multi-dimensional effort of all our people, their understanding of their reality and the manner in which they are to organise their strength to address them.

It is not adequate for the country to be furnished with politicians who consider themselves worthy presidential material. Our political parties are inert, breeding undemocratic politics and the culture of impunity of the very forces that undermine our national aspirations and integrity.

This is why we who are in the NRM continue to believe that genuine political parties should be the standard bearers of the various aspirations in our society. The primary role of political parties is to glean the various interests in our society so as to articulate their alternative ideas.

They ought to be a platform for enlistment and empowerment of the people to guarantee their varied social aims. Leadership of a party flows from its insight and experience of reading the social situation to harness the necessary mental and material factors in the party for the purpose of generating in society the achievement of the required social goals.

When rats squeak with defiance, the cats take interest to feast on them. But in our politics we praise the radiance of the vermin. As the politicians sharpen their knives to skin the country, Ugandans will have to come face to face with a brutal fact; only the growth of genuine mass democratic movements will lift this country out of its various current predicaments.

The author is a member of NEC (NRM) representing historicals