Jinja East by-election: Is Nabeta a loser or victim of circumstances?

Early on Friday afternoon, NRM secretary general Justine Kasule Lumumba announced that the party is to mount a legal challenge seeking to overturn the outcome of the Jinja East by-election in which their candidate, Mr Nathan Igeme Nabeta, suffered defeat at the hands of Mr Paul Mwiru of the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) by a margin of 1,611 votes.
In a statement that she issued in Jinja Town, she claimed that the “elections were riddled with various electoral malpractices”. She listed them as multiple voting, voter bribery, intimidation of voters and acts of violence.

This scenario is akin to what the country saw in the messy NRM primaries of 2010 when the then deputy secretary general of the ruling NRM cried foul, accusing her subjugator, Cerinah Nebanda, then a third year student of Social Sciences at Makerere University, of voter bribery and intimidation of her supporters.
It will be interesting to hear how the NRM will argue its case because as Mr Crispin Kaheru, the coordinator of the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU) pointed out, “this by-election goes down in our books of history as so far the most policed election”.
However, it is important to note that this election was not really about Mr Nabeta. It was about the bigger governance issues the country is faced with.

LC elections, referendum
It was the first in a year in which the country is expected to hold the Local Council elections and a referendum.
It was also the first since the events of December 20 last year when Parliament voted to delete Article 102 (b) of the Constitution, which effectively removed the upper and lower age limits for presidential candidates and in so doing handed Mr Museveni a chance to contest for another term when his current term expires.
Public disapproval of moves to amend the Constitution was widespread. A study carried out by Afrobarometer in the middle of 2017 had revealed that 74 per cent of the population was opposed to the proposed amendment of the Constitution.

Findings of another study which was commissioned by CCEDU and released a few days before Parliament carried out the vote had also revealed that 85 per cent of Ugandans were opposed to the move.
These realities had not been lost to MPs who pushed for the amendment. It was largely on account of the hostility they found out there that the party advised them to change course and dump public consultations for smaller meetings with LCs and party officials.
It was also not lost to others like the Government Chief Whip, Ms Ruth Nankabirwa, that there would be a fallout and that the party needed time to allow for healing of those who would feel aggrieved by such an amendment.

“If you don’t bring this amendment early enough to allow damage control and explanations, it will be difficult,” she had told the NRM parliamentary caucus on September 19 last year.
Ms Nankabirwa was right. Any election was always likely to be used to punish those who were believed to have betrayed their people by voting contrary to their wills and aspirations. That was the case in Jinja East where constitutional amendment was one of the campaign issues.
“He decided to touch it. So let us also touch him,” Ms Salaamu Musumba, the FDC vice president for eastern region, told Mwiru’s main rally in Masese.

Mr Nabeta tried to justify his actions saying that his decision to vote in favour of the amendment had been informed by what he had found during the consultations.
“I consulted and they told me to vote in favour. May be my crime was that I did not consult enough, but I consulted,” he insisted, but that fell on deaf ears.

Matters to do with the economy also had a lot to do with this latest campaign. The collapse of the manufacturing sector and failure to attract new investments and government’s failure to fulfil an 18-year promise to set up an Export Processing Zone (EPZ), coupled with government’s reluctance to fund the operations of Mr Nabeta’s brain child, the Lake Victoria Information Communication Technology and Bio-Technology (LAVIT), which was commissioned in 2010 with a promise of creating 10,000 jobs have all meant that unemployment remains very high.
If Mr Nabeta had stood a chance, it would appear that Mr Museveni’s comments on the last public rally held in Walukuba Masese Division on Tuesday served to whittle them down.

“Even if the NRM MP was sick and sleeping, he is still better than a very active Opposition MP, but because of NRM, vote him,’’ Mr Museveni said.
Coming at a time when many were talking about Mr Mwiru’s sterling performances on the floor of Parliament and in the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where he had been the vice chairman during the 9th Parliament served to boost Mr Mwiru’s standing.
Mr Museveni’s argument was that he would not be in a position to know the problems of the people of Jinja East and disburse funding to fix those problems because members of the Opposition never sit in the same seat with him was dismissed by some voters.

“How much money has he (President Museveni) sent to Jinja during the entire duration of Mr Nabeta’s tenure in Parliament?” asks Joseph Mwidu.
It, therefore, followed that despite the presence of NRM secretary general Kasule Lumumba, NRM treasurer Hassan Galiwango and a host of other dignitaries, all armed with quite hefty kitties, delivering victory for Mr Nabeta was never going to be an easy ride.
Anger towards the NRM for tinkering with the Constitution, failure to address the economic situation and Mr Museveni’s “support” are matters over which Mr Nabeta did not have any control. He found himself in the line of very heavy artillery, which had never been meant for him, but for Mr Museveni and the ruling party.

Opposition unity
One of the biggest aspects of the Jinja East by-election was the show of unity among members of the Opposition. Save for the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which fielded Mugaya Paul Geraldson who walked away with 48 votes, all Opposition parties opted to rally behind Mr Mwiru.

All Opposition heavyweights, including DP president general Norbert Mao and Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, seemed to put their differences aside and put in appearances at Mr Mwiru’s rallies.
At the same time, Mr Mwiru’s candidature seems to have served to help FDC to learn to deal with internal differences.

During Mr Mwiru’s rally at the Busoga Square, all the men who have until now led FDC – Col Dr Kizza Besigye, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu and Patrick Oboi Amuriat – were captured on the same podium. At the same time, Dr Besigye and Bugweri County MP Abdu Katuntu were also captured on the same podium.
Given the highly publicised feuds that have plagued the Opposition as a whole and FDC as a party, it would appear that the Opposition has learned that increasing its numbers in Parliament by allowing the best possible candidates to take on the ruling NRM might be a more worthy venture than sniping away at each other.

DP president Norbert Mao was all praises for the level of cooperation exhibited in Jinja East.
“Jinja is a watershed. It has spoken louder than any words that there is need for unity. People think that Mr Museveni will be pushed out with one big push, but no. It will be through a blow by blow account,” he says.
But for how long will this unity last?

Mr Mao is positive that it can last into any major election if the parties stick to the principles that guided the way they cooperated. He says already the sniping away between DP and FDC has subsided, which makes it easier for the two biggest Opposition parties to work together.
With the Opposition working on possible unity and the NRM presenting itself as the aggrieved party in the Jinja East election, it is clear that beyond the excuses the NRM has to address real and not cosmetic issues out there.
Prof Paul Wangoola, a former Makerere University don who was also a member of the National Consultative Council, has over time argued that it would however take a change of course from the path of dictatorship that the NRM has taken in recent times before it can start addressing the real problems of the citizenry.

This, he says, would call for a review of the party’s strategies. But Mr Rogers Mulindwa, a communications officer at the NRM secretariat, insists that the party will not be reviewing its strategies because it has won at least 23 out of the 30 by-elections held since 2016.
“If we are to make changes, we shall make them because we have to not because we have lost. We are starting to draw a picture of what we want Jinja and other parts of the country to look like. We are going to focus on recruiting more people and luring those in the Opposition to join the NRM,” he says.

Mr Mulindwa goes on to explain that one of the challenges that the NRM has is with young people, adding that “we are going to put attention on young people to make them understand how government programmes work”.
He might have just conceded, albeit inadvertently, that young people are not very supportive of the NRM and that the party is having a rethink about its current strategy. If so, it has its work cut out.

What stakeholders say

If we are to make changes, we shall make them because we have to, not because we have lost. We are starting to draw a picture of what we want Jinja and other parts of the country to look like. We are going to focus on recruiting more people and luring those in the Opposition to join the NRM, ”
Mr Rogers Mulindwa, NRM secretariat communications officer

Jinja is a watershed. It has spoken louder than any words that there is need for unity. People think that Mr Museveni will be pushed out with one big push, but no. It will be through a blow by blow account,”
DP president general Norbert Mao