BY ARINAITWE RUGYENDO

By the time this column went to press last evening, the people of Sembabule District were three days away from voting for their Woman Member of Parliament.
Since the beginning of campaigns three weeks ago, the real contest has solidified around two members from the same party, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), with one of them, Ms. Hanifa Kawooya as the official party candidate and the other, Ms. Joy Kabatsi as an independent candidate but professing Movement ideals.

But Ms. Kabatsi has consistently refused yielding to President Yoweri Museveni’s call to step down for the official candidate arguing she is afterall strong enough to win the January 7 by-election.
During the previous week, the president had addressed several rallies in the district urging voters to support the official party candidate and ignore Kabatsi. 

But soon after these rallies, some sources revealed to your columnist that in some areas, the people-though very staunch NRM supporters- had refused to turn up as a protest gesture to what they saw as the president’s attempt to force an unpopular candidate down their throats.

The Sembabule by-election has in many ways exposed the hidden contradictions within the ruling party which are signs of an organization facing a political rift within its ranks that have the potential to cause its downfall.
Kabatsi’s refusal to step down has therefore unmasked a terrible trend in the NRM in the following ways;

Firstly, the rise and rise of independency within the ruling party’s politics is a clear sign of a political rebellion from within, which could bring upon the NRM the same fate as that which the African National Congress (ANC) party in South Africa recently suffered when some of its members formed a splinter party.

When independents trounce official party candidates, it means that a significant majority of party supporters do not agree with the trend the official party line is taking. In the case of the NRM, this trend of independency has been growing and has the potential to galvanize around a parallel agenda to that of the official party line. 
This is because, independents are not allied to any party and the NRM is in a situation where dissenting independents and similar voices in parliament will grow bigger and become a formidable force against those whom they think are running the party on their whims and not those of the electorate.
The Kabatsi-Kawooya contest has shown that there is a silent counter revolution in the NRM which is growing stronger and serious.

Secondly, the serious question coming out of Sembabule is whether the NRM party is in touch with the ground or it’s the ground out of touch with the party?
On Tuesday, I met Hon. Mary Okurut, the NRM spokesperson and Woman MP for Bushenyi District. She told me she had been to Sembabule and seen the ground herself. From what she saw, she said, she agreed with the president’s position because it was a necessary measure to save the party. 

I partially agreed with her. The president is ofcourse, the fountain of honour. So, in such explosive situations as Sembabule, his wise counsel should be respected. But that is only a pain killer. I told her that his intervention did not resolve the fundamental issues affecting the party in that area, such as disregard of the will of the people. Whereas the president stepped in, the defiance by the electorate revealed that president is possibly not properly briefed.

If Kabatisi’s supporters are more than the party candidate’s, that is ‘people’s power’ which is the foundation of Movementism. In Sembabule, this fundamental concept is repeatedly ignored, which is why it has an independent as its district chairman. In this by-election, it came up again and that’s why it is threatening to tear the party apart. It appeared like party officials who sit in Kampala are forcing candidates onto rural people when it should be the other way round.

One of the key factors that give rise to this situation is that the party has no known working structures. Its network is only active during election time. It has no proper and sustained grassroot system of identifying popular candidates to run as official party candidates during elections.

Candidates are chosen by powerful party officials in Kampala who wield a lot of financial and political muscle. When they lose, like it happened in the 2001 parliamentary elections in Mbarara Municipality where Winnie Byanyima defeated the NRM, the party is continuously exposed as weak. 

For example because of its amorphousness, the only NRM party cards ever known to have been issued were given out free of charge, yet membership to a political party should be paid for in order to strengthen stakeholdership. When people have a stake in a party, it’s easy to discipline them. 

But because in the NRM, no member can claim rights over the party to which they never subscribed financially, none has a stake in it and for that matter, the concept of individual merit flourishes, leaving only one person- the president to control it and hand down policy.

Thirdly, do Ugandans fully understand the current multiparty dispensation? The Sembabule elections have exposed the type of multiparty politics that the NRM wanted Ugandans to practice. What we are practicing is a mixed political system. This is where the NRM concept of politics continues to survive and operate alongside political parties.

During the 2003 famous Kyankwanzi retreat on the return to multipartysm, the president told delegates that the movement will remain the way it is but will allow those who want to form parties to do so. It was understood that the movement would remain in its form even under multipartysm.

It was even decreed in the referendum question later on that those who felt uncomfortable staying inside the movement should get out and find political homes elsewhere under a concept called ‘Okubejjako’

But because the process of transition to parties was rushed through a referendum, and without proper civic education, independents within the NRM and elsewhere continue to grow and win because voters do not differentiate between institutional political discipline and individual merit.
This is the situation that we probably did not know was obtaining in Uganda until the Sembabule by-election.

Contact: rugyendo@gmail.com