Train more cadres

By Amlan Tumusiime

President Yoweri Museveni recently passed out over 1,200 cadres after completing a two-week cadre training course. The cadres were drawn from seven sub counties of Ruhama County in Ntungamo District.

The training was initiated and facilitated by the First Lady, Janet Museveni.

This is positive and the First Lady should be given credit because the trained cadres can play a big role in reaching out to the population at the grassroots, explaining to them NRM achievements, an element that is still lacking.

Such an important programme should not stop in Ntungamo. The First Lady should mobilise her fellow NRM MPs to have the programme rolled out to all districts in the country.

The President correctly described the trained cadres as NRM evangelists. He was right because NRM is a popular party that unfortunately has few trained and committed cadres who can reach out to the population to spread the NRM gospel of unity, prosperity and peace.

The reluctance of NRM to train committed cadres with well packaged information about the party’s programmes and values to disseminate to the people has, for long, been exploited by the opposition to tell the citizens lies that the Government has done nothing for the country.

Of course these claims by the opposition are false because a lot of successes including the FM radio stations they use to malign Museveni’s regime are a product of his good leadership.

What is disappointing is that few NRM cadres use these radio stations to explain the Government’s programmes to the masses and the opposition dominate these radio stations to peddle their lies unchallenged.

This is dangerous because people can easily be swayed by the opposition who feature in the media regularly.

On several occasions, when I used to host a political talk show on Radio Hoima called akatuti kobugabe for over a decade, I used to invite both the opposition leaders and NRM area MPs but the party legislators would not turn up yet the opposition activists would actively participate.

This is very unfortunate for the party because NRM cadres, who have the information, are silent.

This problem is not restricted to rural areas but also in urban centres, where opposition members still dominate political talk shows.

So many well-intentioned programmes of NRM have not been well articulated to the masses and the people supposed to perform this task like RDCs have specialised in opening and closing workshops organised by NGOs and local governments in their respective areas instead of making time to explain and defend government programmes, forgetting that dissemination of accurate and well packaged information is fundamental to the survival of the party.

In fact, the local leaders tend to hoodwink the president when they dominate radio stations prior to his visit in their respective areas but they never go back to these radio stations until Museveni comes back to those areas. Although the NRM party has well established structures, in most areas these, structures are dormant and only mobilise for the party prior to elections.

I strongly support the initiative of Janet Museveni because if it is extended to the whole country and the cadres are given adequate information on various party programmes, people will continue supporting the Government and the party will win the 2016 elections.

People join the opposition because they lack information from the Government.

It is true there is corruption but it is not correct for the opposition to keep deceiving people that the government has no political will to fight the vice.

There are several government officials including ministers who have been prosecuted and forced to resign their jobs after being implicated in corruption related scandals.

During the recent walk to work protests, the opposition convinced the public that the problem of high commodity prices was a Ugandan issue not a global problem.

Matters were made worse when NRM cadres failed to explain the factors behind the price hikes.

This is also why the opposition have been deceiving the country that the judiciary is not independent yet they have been winning cases against the Government including throwing out NRM MPs in favour of the opposition.

Recently, Uganda hosted the Inter Parliamentary Union whose members hailed President Museveni’s government for rapid and big economic changes in the country in a short time.

Therefore, any NRM loving person should embrace the First Lady’s programme so that there is an established team of cadres in every district to articulate government programmes for the party to remain strong and vibrant.