On the evening of the NTV 2025 Presidential Debate, long before the first candidate took the stage, a silent symbol cast its shadow over the event. The NRM Yellow Bus, the ever-present emblem of incumbency, failed to arrive. Its absence stood larger than any arrival could have, an empty chair glowing under the studio lights like a throne whose owner no longer contests its legitimacy. It was the night when power chose not to speak, and yet its silence roared louder than the loudest debater.
In this void of yellow, the opposition took the stage; divided, determined, and dangerously combustible.
The sparks began with Kyadondo East MP Nkunyingi Muwadda, whose restless enthusiasm charged the hall. He proclaimed that all rivals should bow out for Robert Kyagulanyi, the self-proclaimed favourite of the masses. His words flew like arrows aimed to flatter, elevate, and provoke. Yet the hall, already leaning with expectation, found a different rhythm when responses began to unfold.
Gen Mugisha Muntu rose with the calm authority of a seasoned warrior. He dismantled the logic of crowd supremacy with surgical composure. He summoned memories of Besigye’s towering rallies between 2006 and 2016, crowds greater, louder, and more resolute than anything Kyagulanyi has yet commanded. Still, power remained unshaken. Muntu insisted that the opposition had long learned that popularity is not victory, and applause is not power. Without a strategy beyond spectacle, no candidate could claim to be the nation’s inevitable liberator.
Nandala Mafabi followed, carrying a blunt force more piercing than poetry. He mocked Muwadda’s claims as illusions dressed in certainty, insisting that evidence, not euphoria should determine who carries the hopes of the nation. He argued that music, charisma, and mobilised crowds may fill fields, but they do not fill ballot boxes. The FDC’s path, he said, remains grounded in village-to-village persuasion, not theatre wrapped in song.
Then came Frank Bulira Kabinga, youthful yet forged in the fires of fierce conviction. Seated beside Kyagulanyi himself, he refused deference and declared that if any candidate must step aside, it should be the man from Magere. He tore into the myth of crowd power, invoking the memory of Seya’s million-man processions and Ssemogerere’s overwhelming receptions, spectacles that dazzled but never dethroned. To Buliira, leadership required a plan robust enough to survive the morning after elections, not a chorus of “buli omu agumye munne.”
His words, sharp and unyielding, unsettled the hall.
Mabirizi deepened the pressure. With the solemnity of a betrayed elder, he revealed his failed attempts to forge unity with Kyagulanyi, only to be ignored at Magere. He portrayed the NUP leader as a man guarding his political throne rather than building bridges. When challenged, Kyagulanyi offered no strong rebuttal, only silence that hung heavy in the air.
Even tourism advocate Amos Wekesa, a man of gentle persuasion, confronted Kyagulanyi on the failure to articulate his own manifesto’s strong tourism proposals during campaigns. He argued that ideas hidden from the public cannot influence the nation’s imagination.
Throughout the evening, attacks came not just from rivals, but from allies, critics, and technocrats. The spotlight exposed more fractures than unity, more ambition than alignment. In one tense exchange, an ANT youth rebuked Kyagulanyi over statements that could justify state violence. Muntu swiftly intervened to remind the panel that internal conflict serves only to feed the machinery of power.
Kyagulanyi closed the night leaning on destiny, faith, and his journey from obscurity to national prominence. He insisted that governance failures, corruption, brutality, and the longevity of incumbency remain structural barriers, no manifesto can solve without transformation at the core.
Yet even his hopeful rhetoric could not erase the lingering effect of the night’s fiercest exchanges.
As the lights dimmed and the candidates exited the stage, the empty yellow chair remained unmoved, untouched, unthreatened. Its silent presence underscored a truth the night could not deny:
power in Uganda is not won by noise, nor inherited through applause, but conquered through strategy, unity, and discipline.
The debate revealed not the weakness of one man, but the fragmentation of many.
It exposed the fragility of alliances, the intoxication of ego, and the heavy cost of disunity.
It reminded the nation that crowds alone cannot deliver liberation, and criticism alone cannot build a republic.
And when the night finally met its end, one question lingered like smoke in the rafters:
If the Yellow Bus can miss the debate yet never miss its destination, what must the rest learn to finally reach theirs?
