KAWEMPE NORTH BYELECTION: NRM AND THE FEAR OF THE BITTER TRUTH
The National Resistance Movement (NRM) party has just suffered a heavy defeat in the Kawempe Division North parliamentary byelection held last week to replace Muhammad Ssegirinya. Through many of our own missteps, Ssegirinya made a great name for himself, and now, even in death, he is tacitly being honoured by NRM’s repudiation of the election results as a sham. Many people, even casual observers, see the rejection of the election results mostly as an exercise in futility, perhaps intended to avoid the painful political truth of newfound untenable methods, a popularity under stress, and a contest that is dwindling. By publicly overlaying the threats posed by NUP goons, NRM inadvertently instilled fear among its own supporters and voters. The counter-heavy deployment of Police and the army also intimidated opposition supporters, leading to the appallingly low voter turnout of only 18% – 28,002 voters out of the 199,500 registered voters. NRM’s revolutionary and progressive methods now appear abandoned in favour of the cheap conveniences of laxity, soft money, bribery, corruption, and even political violence. These tactics are driving away supporters, voters and people of good common sense, yet its leaders are afraid to publicly admit it. Someone within NRM must tell the cat. Seeing Prime Minister ‘Maijegere’ Robinah Nabbanja parade one of Ssegirinya’s alleged young orphans to extract votes was base, considering the circumstances of his death. NRM last won in Kawempe and Lubaga divisions of Kampala a long time ago – 25 years and counting. Since the return of multiparty democracy, it has suffered repeated drubbings in Kampala, which has become its Waterloo, with no end to its misery in sight. NRM already has a huge parliamentary working majority of 378 out of 529, which is not well-utilised. One wonders why the party turned this byelection – for a seat lasting only seven months before the general election – into a high-stakes, do-or-die affair. There were too many cooks and too many hands in the pie, pulling in different directions for different goals, ultimately spoiling the broth. With the vibrancy of a young population – mostly uneducated, unemployable, or educated with high but unfulfilled expectations – enjoying the radio, television and social media sunshine, yet possessing voting rights, it is difficult to see this misery ending soon if NRM maintains the same laxity and false sense of entitlement. In general elections, especially for the presidency and in recent byelection losses, NRM figures – starting with the obtuse Central Executive Committee – have often sought scapegoats rather than accepting the glaringly evident truths surrounding the party’s current political manoeuvring. In the Buganda region – once a stronghold – and increasingly in Busoga, with expanding urbanisation, NRM could soon become a species threatened with extinction. Renting electoral campaign crowds or relying on bravado and militarism are unlikely to be effective solutions. To survive, NRM must return to hard, creative, and innovative proactive political mobilisation, alongside delivering good public services to the broad majority of Ugandans. The deliberate fabrication, falsification, embellishment and exaggeration of security and political intelligence as underhand methods against our adversaries during elections have become too common and embarrassing to be believed, even by the average member of the public. It may be true that NUP activists had planned to orchestrate the most heinous crimes in Kawempe, particularly on polling day, but that is only known to security agencies. However, given past similar accusations that collapsed under scrutiny, the state needed to do better and apply an even hand. Watching fully dressed police, military, and counter-terrorism officers, armed to the teeth with sophisticated lethal weapons of war, assault election campaigners, voters and journalists and ransack polling stations to scatter voting materials even NRM supporters could not hide their trepidation at how low we had sunk. Rather than going to court or throwing unhelpful political tantrums over the Kawempe loss, NRM should simply wash off the heavy mud on its shoes. Blaming others, when we have been in charge of Uganda for the past four decades, is not a very clever strategy.
By Ofwono Opondo
