It is time for the NRM to die so that it can resurrect
It is said even a good thief has 40 days and after that, it is a case of when he gets caught. It is a hard nut to crack this one because the NRM party is, for the first time in its history, experiencing the first serious signs of a re-birth. It is not going to be a brief journey of a few cries and fallouts. It will last the whole length of a birth experience; meaning that the party’s ideology that has over time become obscure will have to be re-stated, its structures will have to be refined and a new breed of leaders will be handed the reins of power to move the party to the next level.
Even though President Museveni ‘easily’ won the last elections and took a majority in Parliament, the seeds of change within the party had long been sowed in the 2006 presidential election. For the Hermits within the party, 2006 presented the best opportunity for Museveni to have stepped down, and pass on the leadership of the party to fresh hands. Party seers had already seen Museveni’s own beacon dim during his last term and hoped the President would take a break from active national politics so as to preserve his legacy – an asset in its own right for the party’s survival. Well, that didn’t happen.
The NRM’s current troubles can be traced as far back as the middle of the party’s last term in government but when it became clear that Museveni was not going to leave the seat as some had expected, the momentum of revulsion from within reached a new height during the party’s internal elections last year. Those elections brought to the fore new divisions, concretised alliances along ethnic groups and forced a re-emergence of unknown before power broker centres.
Museveni knows the ‘evil powers’ within but it is unlikely that he understands the magnitude of its base and the magnitude of its ramifications when it eventually explodes in his face.
When presidential advisor John Nagenda spoke to this newspaper in September, it was clear from his soul-searching statements that he and others had seen enough of Museveni’s failure to have a viable vision for the country. And it tells from the collection of Cabinet staff that he has surrounded himself with that he no longer knows who is capable of delivering or not his prophetic promises of 1986. In turn, most of them are acutely aware of the man’s waning glow but are sitting put like a den of lions waiting for their prey to dye slowly out of exhaustion. While the Cabinet is split over the excesses of some of its members, there is a general sense of not doing anything that will upset the President even if it is for his own good. They are foolishly ready to let the captain sink the ship out of foolishness.
The current woes of some senior Cabinet ministers facing litigation over accounts of taking bribes or abuse of office draws a thick line of days gone by when the President had the capacity to protect those whom he trusted. That capacity is what is at stake now with cries of witch-hunt within party ranks. Trade minister Amelia Kyambadde has been mentioned as commandeering a section of Parliament to turn against a fellow minister and with it Museveni’s own head seems to hang loose.
Businessman Hassan Basajjabalaba has been able to outwit even the most civil technocrats to make deep cuts on the national treasury and consequently placed the President on the defensive over whether he authorised the “scandalous and unacceptable” payments, then he has had to show a defiant face in the Gilbert Bukenya woes - attributed to Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, who is equally trying to keep his own umbilical cord intact. These events only go to tell how little power there is left for Museveni to thrust around because eagle-eyed party members are exploiting the looseness of the power hold at the centre.
The images of FDC president Kizza Besigye being brutalised in April by the Police is one such occasion when power was misused. A Red Cross worker ran across the road to save a baby from the fumes of teargas exploded indiscriminately by the Police as it chased demonstrators.
A section of the party has realised that its future survival now depends on how they shape its destiny and not left to the whims of its current leader. They will, however, have to wrest power from him, not through board discussions but through the delicate means of innovative destruction.
Sometimes, the penultimate signs of an impending death are the least salient but in this case they have not been so. The NRM party is on the verge of an evolution after a generation of life. It must first die to return as a strong party. This state of affairs however good for a country may not necessarily have the positive impact that the country needs.
After 26 years in power, everything comes at an enormous cost. The NRM is counting past its 40th day!
