By Ofwono Opondo
By the time you read this article, the massive fallouts from the just concluded primaries to select NRM parliamentary flag-bearers would still be unravelling across the country. Bitter and sour tastes will be hard to swallow, while the winners will be smiling gleefully. Just imagine the ever-disruptive Theodore Ssekikubo, having to compromise with a bullish Rtd. Brig. Emmanuel Rwashande, no matter who’s given the flag in Lwemiyaga.
Clearly still on the front foot, but NRM, previously hailed as a “clear-headed” organisation, has slowly left its politics, and elections to increasingly become extortionist, with voters demanding their piece of the pie to be given instantly before the voting. Looking how petty some of the demands are, it is truly becoming difficult to distinguish the leaders from ordinary membership and voters. MPs having turned parliamentary seats into mere personal welfare, voters ask for cash and goodies without the bother for effective representation for the general good.
A raucous campaign, mingled in out-right lying against each other, colossal personal financial spending, tearing down posters, stone-pelting, burning down vehicles of rivals, and even causing deaths in some instances, and paying voters on the que to vote on polling day, give sour taste to NRM election politics. The campaigns and voting, which should otherwise be cordial to entrench and consolidate democracy has turned into an aggressive war battlefield. In other instances, the NRM voters’ registers have been deliberately bloated with mischief to compromise the integrity of the election outcome. For the electoral college voting, of youth, older persons, workers, and PWD MPs, candidates are actively plotting to hide voters from the reach of rivals.
From past experiences in all the elections, many losers have found the loss too personal to gracefully accept the outcome and remained dejected, often choosing to run as ‘independents’, and with many winning the main election, which absolved them. But usually, they will curtail, and sign a memorandum to work with the NRM in parliament.
But as NRM members agonize about the bruising outcome, they ought to know that an even tougher general election awaits us in January 2026, and therefore, we must prepare better to deliver a convincing outcome. For the NRM presidential candidate, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, we should strive to deliver a knock-out punch, as a starting point, by reclaiming Busoga and Buganda regions he lost in 2021.
While opposition parties, NUP. FDC, DP, UPC, PFF, and whatever club may come up towards the elections, may only be masqueraders, NRM leaders ought to know, that we are fast losing touch on multiple fronts with Ugandans generally, voters in particular, especially elite urbanites, and young people. With every city, municipality, towns and even trading centres, NRM has built, electoral support has declined on account of failing to meet public expectations raised.
The rising media expansion, digital, mobile and social media, freedom, and citizen journalism have created an activist public that demands effective and proper full accountability on every issue, not laxity and lackluster political leadership. By our collective lethargy in government service delivery, caused by corruption, NRM has generated anger that its politicians are not listening as they ought to do. NRM is talking too much to itself. In fact, many in the public now believe that NRM has lived past its sell value, or stayed beyond its welcome.
And that hostility is finding home in shoddy groups like NUP, clearly without any credible national transformational agenda, yet somehow continue to gather pace among the young people. All of this on the backdrop that NRM is doing so little to roll back some blatant lies, and fabrications being peddled by its detractors that speak to public frustrations, and now amplified on social media. All election politics is local, NRM must focus more on local voter concerns.
