Water swamped the people’s mandate in Masindi NRM primaries

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By Kyetume Kasanga

Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the United States who died in 1790 aged 84 years, once alluded to the fact that if good people did not take up leadership roles, bad people would do.

Good leaders must possess attributes that enable them to inspire and guide others. They must be intelligent and have clean hands. In addition, they must be of integrity to build trust and foster positive attitudes among the people.

The NRM party is currently identifying its flagbearers in next year’s general elections. However, the system is not supporting the best people to compete for these political positions. Transactional politics has taken over, giving transformational leadership a break. That’s why we might end up with baggage as leaders in some places.

In Masindi district, 32,491 people lined up to vote for the LC5 Chairperson flagbearer on Thursday, July 24, 2025. Of these, 15,276 (47%) are said to have voted the eventual winner, while the majority, 17,215 (53%), were not in his favour; they voted his opponents.

In the shadow of “people’s mandate”, the least popular guy sailed through using money, manipulation and manoeuvring. There is, therefore, need to interrogate the term “people’s mandate”.

Ordinarily, it is the will of the majority but in Masindi it took on a different meaning. Polling was marred with bribery, intimidation, political thuggery and other malpractices, essentially smuggling the NRM flag.

Guys paid goons to desecrate and pull down our posters, influenced people to hide or steal our giant portraits, compromised some of our agents and electoral officials, and bought off some of our supporters to shun polling stations.

The areas laden with such irregularities included Kimengo and Bikonzi subcounties, all four Divisions in Masindi Municipality, Kabango Town Council and parts of Pakanyi subcounty, where several million shillings exchanged hands to stampede democracy.

Masindi district expressed the “people’s mandate” by not voting the flagbearer. They gave him only 47% of the total votes cast. The import of these statistics is that 53%, the majority of the voters expressed no confidence in him as he sauntered to the finishing tape.

Normally, the vote should have been redone to ensure the “people’s mandate” reigned supreme as a reflection of the majority's wish. However, with those results, the District Returning Officer, Moses Ogwang, went on to declare the flagbearer.

During the candidates’ briefing at the official launch of the campaigns last month, a catalogue of actions for smooth campaigns was announced to curtail the emergence of independent candidates. However, none of the measures was implemented. Independents are now going to storm the political arena.

Masindi District has 417 villages, 57 parishes, 10 subcounties, four town councils and four Divisions. However, only two weeks were allotted for candidates to cover all this terrain. They lost time waiting for logistics from the NRM Electoral Commission to carry out joint campaigns as the party had promised.

On the campaign trail, they raced against time and only competed in dishing out money. Aspiring MPs had set a dangerous precedent; they spent not more than 15 minutes at a public rally and even had up to 15 rallies in a single day!

Some of them simply hyped themselves, praised the NRM party and rallied voters before dishing out loads of money. They never reviewed their running manifestos, if any, or unleashed new ones, if any.

If they spent three minutes talking, the voters spent another 10 decorating them with dry banana leaves. Women laid their garments as “red carpets” for them to tread. Unknown to the candidates, the women did this to each one who came after the other.

Candidates lost potential voters if they gave “little water” (loads of money deemed insufficient) as inducements. In fact, the voters wanted the “water” more than they loved the candidates, and were unwilling to listen for development programmes.

They booed and heckled, reminding the candidates to give them “water” and go to woo voters elsewhere since they were short of time, or complained that the “water” was too little.

As an NRM candidate for the LC5 seat, I carried my 299-page Manifesto, which has extensive provisions on good governance, integrated household wealth creation, environmental and natural resource use, and human capital development for Masindi District Local Government come 2026-2031.

The provisions also include the socio-economic well-being of the vulnerable, public-private partnerships in local service delivery and resource mobilisation, among others.

However, there was neither time nor space to unveil them to the voters. The Manifesto is now gathering dust on the shelves in my reading room, and might see no light of day anymore.

Just like that, and we have NRM flagbearers for next year’s general elections! The system irrigates corruption, dishonesty, intrigue and deceit, disfavours revolutionary methods of work, meets clear-headedness with acrimony and dustbins objectivity.

I wanted to return as an independent candidate, but my fellow contestant, Wobusobozi Patrick, would do the same. We would end up with the exact scenario that Masindi district is now grappling with: third-rated capabilities for district leadership.

Now that he has announced his independent candidature in the general elections, my team and I are on the ground and will actively campaign for him. After all, he’s NRM-leaning. As an NRM graduate of Basic Cadre Development and Military Science course (Cadre 14), I remain committed to the party’s ideals and ideology, but not the flagbearer.

The writer is a retired Ag Assistant Commissioner for Information Monitoring in the Ministry of ICT & National Guidance, an NRM Cadre and contestant for the Masindi District LC5 Chair in the recent NRM primaries