Why futile attempt still upsets Mbabazi

By Mary Mutesi

Ironically speaking, Uganda's political superman, Amama Mbabazi, as was believed by many opposition strategists, is still far from performing to the expectations of many.

All his attempts seem to have failed to deliver him to State House, this time not as a close ally of the incumbent President his long time comrade, but his drive for the Presidency seems to be forwarded for the future and not now.

This write up seeks to highlight a few strategic approaches from the right Hon. Amama that he attempted to employ but failed to deliver victory and or, even make any impact at all.

Firstly, when Amama broke away from the NRM, his immediate attempt was to play the vulnerable. This was to take advantage of the reshuffle, which saw him axed as the Prime Minister of Uganda. At this point, many sprang up in favour of Amama questioning why he had been sacked. This fell short of any advantage to Amama, whether nationally or internationally. It was a simple fact that needs no explanation. The President is the appointing authority and has a right to hire and fire any person in his cabinet.

Secondly, Amama attempted to ride on his historical links to the NRM, claimed it; as a founder, tried to position himself as a superman of the Museveni government, this intending to cause a divide within the party. Many strategists from the Opposition saw him as a blessing despite their reservations on his integrity and innocence of any mistakes of the NRM government. They decided to become his public advocates with a view of using him as a divisive tool within the NRM.

The NRM as a party was caught unaware, but within the Party clearheaded strategies were designed to keep the party intact and at worst mitigate any big number of breakaway faction from the party at such a time. Worst still was during the party primaries when many got dissatisfied of the way they were managed by the NRM Electoral Commission. This was a trying period, but despite a few hiccups, the party leadership managed to mitigate the wide spread tensions and managed to forge a united team into the general elections. At this time, the Amama team was awash with expectations of many rallying behind their candidate. Unfortunately, even the few that had covertly sought financial support from Go Forward were too covert to be of any political value to Team-Mbabazi.         

Thirdly, Mbabazi declared himself an independent candidate and eventually formed a Go Forward slogan that was intended to garner support from the NRM and opposition groups. He equally started courting individual opposition groups and personalities, who later fell prey and swung into the illusion of getting a Messiah, one "who knew" the NRM in and out.

Believing they were smart enough, they decided to rally behind him selfishly though, and use him to weaken the NRM, little did they know that he was a time bomb that would explode against them.

In this regard, his attempt was frustrated by Besigye's eventual return to contest and it was a matter of allegiance. Would the Opposition have a fresh convert as their Presidential candidate or a historical comrade in the struggle against the Museveni government? Nevertheless the results were well clear that none of the two would bow down in favour of the other for Presidency. Many of us kept asking, with the two men egos, who would wish to drop his ambition of becoming the President of Uganda.

Unfortunately for Amama, the strong opposition Party decided to go at it alone and the minor parties for one reason or another, probably financial support to individual persons for their Parliamentary or Local Council Elections' bid, decided to go with Amama, a thing that many interpreted as betrayal.

Although unfortunate for the Opposition, to the NRM it was a blessing. The unpredictable happened, that the expected dividing tool within the NRM worked more against the opposition than wished.

As the campaigns gained momentum, Amama, then played the "handicapped Prime Minister". As many voters held him accountable for all the weaknesses of the NRM government, he (Amama) showed innocence. He denied having any powers to influence anything for the 30 years he had been closer to the President. Whereas, the popular view was that he wielded too much influence and power and he could not ask for more at all.

This indeed backfired against him, that his campaigns turned out as a name clearing platform, an issue many of his allies based on to stay detached. It is only the daring like Mike Mabikke that could show face in defense of Amama Mbabazi.

Later, the cunning Mbabazi, commonly known as JPAM, swang into agitation, as he came to know that in the neighbourhood, there was another successful campaign of one, John Pombe Amos Magufuli  aka JPAM.

The Tanzanian Magufuli had created lots of debate in the first 100 days of his Presidency. The Uganda's JPAM claimed performance DNA connections to his counterpart. Was this good enough to earn Amama popularity? Yes it would; if only it was a student guild contest in a higher institution of learning. But to the adult voting populace of Uganda, this was farfetched and of less impact. Unfortunately, Mbabazi decided to ride on this for almost half of his campaign trail. Yet, if one would ask, was he in any way a match to Magufuli? In my opinion the two may have same name initials, but no single trace of political DNA similarities at all. Here are the differences:

a)      Magufuli offered himself through CCM internal processes, and he was agreed on as the party's candidate.

b)      His track record of service earned him flag bearership as the most likely candidate to win for CCM, whereas Mbabazi never offered himself through the NRM internal systems. He instead ran to court to challenge internal set rules of nomination, riding on this to justify his independent candidature.

c)      It goes without saying that Magufuli won the elections for Tanzania, with 58.46% and in Uganda's election Mbabazi got 1.5%.

He (Mbabazi) cannot even compare with Lowassa, who would have been atleast associated with him in one way or another, considering the fact that Lowassa was accused of graft, office abuse and embezzlement, the reason the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of CCM dropped him as a candidate, despite the fact that he was the most popular, the reason Lowassa defected to Chadema Party.

Nevertheless one could trace a little political resemblance between Amama and Lowassa. Apart from the graft allegations against the two, Mbabazi attempted to sway the neophyte opposition parties just as Lowassa did. Lowassa got four parties forming an alliance called UKAWA that consisted of CHADEMA PARTY, THE LIBERATION CIVIC UNITED FRONT (CUF), MAGEUZI AND THE NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY. And still just as Mbabazi caused FDC to throw in the towel for the Democratic Alliance, Lowassa too caused CUF Chairman, Ibrahim Lipumba to resign stating that the UKAWA had reneged on its original agreement concerning new converts from CCM. Although Mbabazi refused to be called a convert from the NRM, he continued to state that he is still a member of the NRM; something that as well worked against him.

It, therefore, emerges that Mbabazi, despite the legal petition avenues exploited, he politically failed to achieve his goals, as he had earlier believed. Many held the view that he, decided to remain in the race for the sake of completion but not to win. The stakes were already high for his team by the third week of the 2016 campaigns. Indeed, my observation is that it is almost impossible to dislodge the NRM from power, because of its connectivity to the ordinary people, the composure and maturity of politics played gives it favour before the people. The 2016 vote was not about how much emotion and chants of slogans of change, but more about the need for the NRM to remain and safeguard specific achievements. When the people watched the high handedness of opposition supporter groups in their strong holds, many turned to vote for protection of property and security of person than the emotional appeals of the other presidential hopefuls.

The writer is the deputy spokesperson of the NRM Task force