Museveni blasts NRM-leaning independent candidates

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President Yoweri Museveni has blasted National Resistance Movement (NRM) party members standing as independents in the 2026 General Election.

“For an NRM person to be an independent in a constituency where the party can lose to the Opposition is really criminal and politically bankrupt [because] we can see that you are not seeing far,” he said on Tuesday (November 5, 2025).

Museveni, who is also the NRM national chairperson, made the remarks while interacting with journalists from the Teso sub-region during a live TV and radio talk-show at State Lodge in Soroti city.

He noted that the move to stand as an independent damages prospects for the party’s candidates to win the seats, especially at the parliamentary level.

“Politically, it is very damaging for you to be involved in causing NRM to lose a constituency because of your selfishness,” Museveni, who stated that legally it stands to run as an independent, emphasised.

He also warned that if an independent contributes to the ruling party losing a constituency, they will be politically condemned forever.

“We shall know that you are the one who caused us to lose because this is what happened in some areas like Buganda (where) we lost like 21 seats because of that. Even in Kasese when Dr [Crispus] Kiyonga and others lost the constituency, it was because of that,” he said.

“But secondly, even where there are only NRM (members), it is not really correct to be an independent there because you are disturbing our people by forcing them to choose between the two of you,” he said.

The majority of the losers were recently nominated by the National Electoral Commission as independents in the forthcoming election, including state ministers David Bahati (industry) in Ndorwa West and Dr Joyce Kaducu (primary education) in Moyo district. 

Independents dilemma

Out of 2,000 directly nominated Members of Parliament were duly nominated by the Electoral Commission on October 22 and 23, to compete in the 353 constituencies across the country, 947 are independent. The majority of these defied their parties after losing in the party primaries.

After the nominations closed, NRM had 348 independent candidates, followed closely by the National Unity Platform (NUP), which had 216, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) 159, Democratic Party (DP) 74, Democratic Front (DF) 70, People’s Front for Freedom (PFF) 56 and Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) 40.

According to the Electoral Commission (EC) records, the independents also dominated nominations in the 146 elected district woman representatives. Out of the 634 nominated aspirants, the independent candidates were 253.