The Ugandan constitution does say that any citizen over 18 can run for president. It’s a beautiful sentence smooth, democratic, and roughly as accurate in life as the use-by date on street food. Because while the law promises access, in life it’s sold at wholesale to the highest bidder.

Competency, for our political economy, is a malleable term. On paper, it defines you as capable of leading, inspiring, making decisions, and representing the nation. In practice, being “competent” is generally meaning that you have a war chest deep enough to make the public think that you can inspire, lead, and represent the nation. That is to say: if you can’t finance a small war, then you can’t even begin a viable campaign.

It’s an open secret that running for president in Uganda is not a test of leadership it’s a test of liquidity and logistics. You need money to print bills, hire mobs, gas to fuel the ubiquitous cavalcade of cars that constitutes an aura of gravitas, and perhaps most crucially, to grease “transport” money where it will be noticed. It is not cynicism; it is election planning. You could have a manifesto that solves every problem from potholes to potholes in the budget, but without the funds to blast it into people’s faces preferably via a T-shirt, billboard, or free rally meal it will die a lonely death on page two of your stapled proposal.

This is where competence is both subjective and objective. Objectively, you need to have leadership vision, political savvy, and stamina to last the Ugandan political marathon. Subjectively, you need to look as if you already are ruling shiny convoys, blown-up rally crowds, even the occasional helicopter touch-and-go in some godforsaken field. Without that camouflage, you’re “not serious.”

Which leads us to the tragedy-comedy of periodically a poor dauntless soul going around gathering presidential nomination forms. It’s ambitious. It’s admirable. And it’s also almost entirely pointless. Without a lot of money, you can’t mobilize. Without mobilization, you can’t sway the rural voter. And without the rural voter, you may as well be running for class monitor in a country where the classroom is 241,000 square kilometres.

They know that, of course. They’ve got the competence theatre ritual down to a science wherein the candidate is brought forth as the hero of the country, with scripted crowds, contracted photographers, and outrageously well-timed outrage at national scandals. It’s not so much what you can do for the country, but how much you’ll pay to appear like the kind of person who might do something for the country.

And where satire wounds the most is here: we still call it “competence,” but perhaps the truer word is “capital.” The two have become inseparable to the point that we no longer recognize the distinction. A money-less idealist is “idealistic.” A money-less visionary is “a serious contender.” I wonder who gets more airtime.

So technically, anybody can challenge. But practically speaking, Ugandan politics is like an elite nightclub: the doorman does not care whether you’re wonderful or brilliant—he only cares whether you have the cover charge. And if you get in, you discover that the DJ only plays requests from people who can pay.

Competency in this model is not just skill. It’s thriving in an environment where votes are not wooed simply with ideas, but with receipts. Until that reverses, the presidency will be more less of a public office than a walled estate open to all in theory, but accessible to some in practice.

So, to the dreamers collecting their nomination forms without the machinery or the money: it’s noble. It’s historic. And unless you’ve also been quietly collecting billions, it’s exactly what it looks like—an expensive way to audition for the role of “footnote” in the next election post-mortem.