Victory staring at NRM

By Moses Byaruhanga

As we come close to the end of the campaigns, it is clear that the NRM presidential candidate, President Yoweri Museveni, the old man with a heart for Ugandans will win come February 18.

What the NRM supporters have to do is to come out in big numbers and vote. Why am I writing that the NRM will win? The NRM is the only party that has organised party structures from the village level up to the national level. At the village level, the NRM has 30 leaders.

With 60,000 villages, the NRM has 1.8 million leaders at the village level. At parish level, we have 30 leaders for each of the 7,500 parishes; hence, the total number of leaders at that level is 225,000.

At sub county level, we also have 30 leaders in each of the 1,500 sub counties/town councils. Hence the total number of the NRM leaders at that level is 45,000.

At the district level, the leaders are 4,000. All the above NRM leaders add up to 2,074,005. The two million NRM leaders, if each turned up to vote with five other voters, you will have 12 million votes for the NRM. With that strategy, how can President Museveni lose an election? No other party has such organisational infrastructure.

Apart from the level of organisation, the NRM has candidates at all levels starting with candidates for the sub county councils whose constituency is the parish. So in each of the 7,500 parishes plus the 30% seats reserved for women, NRM has a total of 9,750 candidates running for the position of councillors to the sub county councils.

Then you add on the 1,500 candidates standing for the position of sub county chairpersons. At district level the NRM has 1,500 candidates running for the positions of councilors to the district councils. You add on the 30% seats reserved for the women the total is 1,950 candidates. Then the candidates running for the district Chairperson and parliamentary seats.

There is no other party with candidates for all the elective positions mentioned above. The beauty with this is that when these candidates are campaigning, they do campaign for themselves and the NRM presidential candidate. So the campaign machinery of the NRM is unrivalled. Furthermore, there are Independent candidates and many opposition candidates who are also campaigning for themselves and President Museveni.

Besides, all the members of the party structure are campaigning for the NRM presidential candidate. In the past few days, the NRM sent facilitation and a copy of the manifesto and a message from the President/Candidate to every village. As a result, village meetings/rallies have been held/are still being held. This has led to the NRM message reaching the grassroots. No other party can match this.

Two days ago, Muzei Mwijakubi of Kigorobya in Hoima district rang me at 4:30 am. He was excited.

He told me that the campaigns had taken place in the past week when they went village to village. The same applies to many other calls coming in from up country, from Lango, Acholi, West Nile, Teso, etc. all are saying that the NRM message has reached the villages and in all assessments from across the country the message is clear that the NRM is winning.

Besides the above organisational structure, the NRM candidate has held rallies in all the constituencies in Uganda. Others have been holding rallies at district level, hence, the NRM message has reached more people in the villages. All the constituency rallies of candidate Museveni have been massively attended.

To match the big rallies of candidate Museveni, one of the TVs had to do photo shopping recently to show that another candidate has big crowds. This is unprofessional but it will be dealt with as the evidence is available.

Museveni will also win because his message appeals directly to the people. He is talking about the success in the road infrastructure, where Uganda's tarmac roads are now 4,000 km from the 800 km in 1986. Now with increased revenue collection from sh5b in 1986 to the current sh13 trillion, we are able to tarmac more roads including roads in Kampala City and all the municipalities where roads are being rehabilitated. In the next five years, the 2,000 km of roads will be tarmacked.

The details of the roads are in the NRM manifesto and the President has read them out to the people at his rallies; district by district. The other big success is in the energy sector where out of 112 districts all but four have power.

Even in the four districts without power; Buvuma, Kaabong, Kotido and Nwoya, construction of the power lines is at different levels. They will soon have power. Today, the power extension is to sub counties. The NRM has also invested in power generation. Karuma and Isimba dams are under construction. Uganda will never have power shortage again.

On health, the NRM policy has been and continues to be immunisation, providing health centre IIIs with maternity wards at sub county level.

Out of 1,500 sub counties, only 225 sub counties don't have health centre IIIs. At constituency level, out of the 290 constituencies, only 100 don't have health centre IVs. A health centre IV is supposed to have a theater and is manned by two doctors while a health centre III is manned by two clinical officers.

On hospitals, we are rehabilitating the old hospitals and 14 new hospitals will be constructed. Our focus is going to be to ensure that all the health units are well equipped, have manpower and enough drugs all the time.

Also we will provide health centre III in the sub counties without them. The same will be done for the constituencies without health centre IVs.  On education, we are consolidating the achievements in UPE, USE, free higher education, student loan scheme. We will focus on improving supervision so as to get better quality education. The other day I met a student from Mukono University who started primary in a UPE school. There are many out there.

We will ensure that the about 387 sub counties without a USE school have a Government school. Already 240 community or religious founded schools are earmarked for grant aiding by the Government starting next financial year.

This will immediately reduce the number of sub counties with a Government school to about 147. In these sub counties, our plan is to construct a Government seed school. On primary education, our policy is to have a primary school in every parish.

Out of 7,500 parishes, only 1,742 don't have Government primary schools. Our policy is to construct primary schools in these parishes. Other social programmes include the success in provision of clean water in the rural areas where now 65% of Ugandans can access clean water within a radius of one kilometre.

The other 35% access water but walk distances longer than one kilometer. Our policy is to reduce the distances people walk to get clean water especially in the water stressed areas. On wealth creation, the president is talking about increasing the NAADS fund from sh203b to one trillion. This will increase the households getting assistance from the Government to engage in commercial agriculture. The women will have the women fund of sh2b for each district.

The youth fund will also be increased so that every district gets sh2b annually. This will help in addressing youth unemployment for those youth who will be able to borrow the money and employ themselves.

For the others, we will increase the opportunities of job creation through industrialisation. Our policy is to equip the industrial parks to make it easy for those who want to set up factories. Other youth will be trained in practical skills to enable them get jobs easily.

We will support various groups like those in garages, carpentry workshops, shoe making, weaving and knitting, pottery with better work places and common use machines. The innovation fund will help those in innovation.

The micro finance will be extended to the villages and in the city, we will give it to organised groups in arcades, Kikuubo, markets, garages, carpentry workshops, etc. all these will lead to a Museveni success come Feb 18. Please go and vote.

The writer is a senior Presidential adviser on political affairs