OPINION

By Ofwono Opondo

The political ground is beginning to shake again in preparation for the 2026 general election as inter and intra-party elbowing come to the surface, possibly realignments and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) needs to keep possible opposition resurgence within check. After 37 years under President Yoweri Museveni, NRM no longer enjoys much of the rose garden considering various internal malaise, impudence and public dissatisfaction over sluggish service delivery.

In 2021, ministers and NRM MPs, especially in Busoga and Buganda, made denouncing policy failures from the pulpit a specialty to distance them from public criticism and left Museveni to hang alone. They chorused how corruption failed health, education and agriculture, while taxes and high-handedness suffocated businesses, fisheries and industries, which they falsely claimed perpetuated poverty.

Some NRM leaders like to shift blame to critics in the opposition, media, civil society organisations and other entities, who they claim frustrate NRM policies. It rarely occurs to them that we have been here for 37 years. NRM strategists should get worried that a party that stands for socio-economic transformation, but with each election circle loses the urbanites, educated and moneyed elites, stirs peril. The ongoing country tour by the National Unity Platform (NUP), accompanied by some US embassy people in their vehicle CD 02 344U, so far left to proceed without Police disruptions, has denied it the sensational and wide publicity they had hoped for, and as well as the evidence of brutality and human rights violations to present for their case lodged at the International Criminal Court.

The 2021 election brought a defeat to Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Norbert Mao and two retired Uganda People’s Defence Force generals; Mugisha Muntu and Henry Tumukunde, but NRM still seems damned. Muntu and Tumukunde were Museveni’s protégés rushed through the ranks, whose ambitions turned them into stubborn turncoats. It has been entertaining to watch their politics flounder although they tried unsuccessfully to spread the blame game.

When dropped as army commander in 1998, Muntu, previously loyal, turned bitter, detached and politically ambivalent and finally abandoned NRM for FDC, where he grumbled throughout his stay as being undermined by the radical wingers.

Twice, he ran in futility to upstage Besigye as president, but finally succeeded against Nathan Nandala Mafabi in a contest that left FDC spilt down the middle and with a prolonged internal brawl. In the subsequent contest, Muntu was toppled by Patrick Amuriat favoured by Besigye, forcing him and his allies to bolt out to form Alliance for National Transformation.

Tumukunde was crushed in the 2021 election. Many pundits saw him more as an arrogant schemer seeking Museveni’s third beckon, while others even thought he was a double agent Museveni had sent to infiltrate and disorganise the opposition.

FDC, which was touted by the media as a strong party, has now tumbled due to intrigue, with just 30 MPs supplanted by NUP. Meanwhile, Besigye, having sensed FDC’s decline, kept a safe distance from Amuriat as a presidential candidate, who he left to shoulder his own burden and the current squabbles may bury its arrogance and belligerence. FDC has lost its 15-year status as leader of opposition in Parliament. At district level in local governments, FDC has only eight chairpersons and has been evicted from Kasese, Rukungiri, Kampala, Teso, West Nile and Acholi. And although now in a climate of desperate hope rewarded by one bad media headline after another, FDC finds comfort in pursuing imaginary traitors, scapegoats and conspiracies.

NRM’s defeat of Ronald Okumu, Ogenga Latigo, Gerald Karuhanga, Paul Mwiru, Ezati Kasiano Wadri, Robert Centenary, Samuel Odonga Otto, Hassan Kaps Fungaro, and Alice Alaso and Miria Matembe from regaining parliamentary seats has more than compensated its losses elsewhere. Mao, who suffered desertions when Democratic Party MPs abandoned the party for NUP and is now Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs in Government, does not deserve further castigation, while NUP, which is cutting and pasting Besigye’s discredited bellicose tactics ought to be made to regret its follies.

While NRM has a comfortable majority of 359 MPs, the combined opposition is for the first time beyond the one hundred mark, which should worry the party, partly due to demographics, yet NRM hasn’t been playing smart legislative politics and public relations, relying mainly on sheer numbers and President Museveni’s weight.

To manage better, the NRM caucus should improve internal methods so as to effectively deal with various filibusters and regain higher confidence among Ugandans. Unfortunately, the party that hoped to dismantle corruption, sectarian and elite politics, now appears to rely on their potency to achieve its goals while failures inflate the strength of imaginary foes. NRM is no longer riding the revolutionary conveyor belt, but watching being fluffed along, and lacking the courage to disrupt it. Going by what NUP isn’t achieving when not unduly disrupted, it serves NRM and Uganda better when the underhand political methods are kept in the closest.