What next for NRM after 27 years at the helm?

Man with a different approach. The National Resistance Movement is one of the longest-serving political parties not only in Uganda but across the continent. From the first bullet shot by then NRA guerillas to the most recent ballot cast in the General Election, so much water has gone under the bridge. However, scholars, activists and politicians think differently about NRM’s future. Sunday Monitor’s Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi, attempts to answer the question; which way forward for NRM?

What will have become of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) 27 years from today? This seems like a legitimate question to ponder as NRM marks 27 years at the helm, having first shot to power in January 1986.
But to Makerere University law don Prof Jean-John Barya, to ask about the fate of NRM is to give the party undue importance.

“The party doesn’t matter,” Prof. Barya says, “It is just a formalistic arrangement to drive (President Yoweri) Museveni’s rule.”

To Prof Barya, in short, “the future of NRM means the future of Museveni” and, by implication, the party’s long stay in power is a tribute to Museveni’s political skill.
Why does Barya say so?

Functional parties, Prof. Barya says, have rules, structures and a constitution which they follow and everybody is subject to it.

He cites Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) in Tanzania and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa as examples of parties in which rules apply to everyone.
But with NRM, the professor says, “organs are only called when it is convenient for Mr Museveni and they are supposed to work on behalf of and for Museveni.”

The other problem with NRM, Prof. Barya says, is that the public service, the police and army “have all been fused with the party”. This, according to Moses Khisa, a PhD candidate of political science at Northwestern University in the US, creates a problem of institutionalisation.

Mr Khisa makes a distinction between a political organisation and a political institution. For a political organisation to be institutionalised, he says, it has to evolve a set of routine activities instead of waiting for the five-year election cycle for the party organs to spring into action.

Drawing from the idea popularised by the American political scientist Samuel Huntington in a 1968 book, Political Order in Changing Societies, Mr Khisa and Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a history don at Makerere University, say NRM still has to pass two more tests. It has to experience a change of power, not just from one leader to another, but also across generations.

The second test NRM must pass before it is confirmed as an institutionalised party, they say, is to lose power and survive in opposition.

But surviving outside power in Africa is a tall order, Mr Mwambutsya reckons. He says that virtually all independence parties in Africa died the moment they lost power.

Mr Mwambutsya cites an example next door of the Kenya African National Union, which held power for four decades but is almost no more since being defeated in 2002.
Ghana’s independence party, Conventional Peoples Party of Kwame Nkrumah, Khisa adds, is a shell of its former self, led by Nkrumah’s daughter Samia Nkrumah.

NRM is not Uganda’s independence party (it is Uganda Peoples’ Congress which is also ailing) but the duo sees tendencies, especially being built and run around an individual, that make NRM look like the parties elsewhere in Africa that have fizzled out after losing power.

On this basis, the two argue, NRM is unlikely to survive as a viable party the moment it loses power. “You hardly get a sense that there is anything that binds NRM together,” Mr Mwambutsya argues, pointing to what he calls the absence of the “software factors (values, ideology) that bind organisations together.”

“Multi-ideological organisation”
But the NRM Buganda Caucus Chairman, Mr Godfrey Kiwanda, says very few understand what NRM really is. To him, it is not a political party but a political organisation. So what is the difference?

Parties, Mr Kiwanda says, are built on a single ideology while political organisations, which he says NRM is, are “multi-ideological”.

He says that is why Museveni, who was originally a communist, managed to rally people of different thinking, including monarchists, who Mr Kiwanda prefers to call federalists.

“That is why you find federalists and republicans all in NRM,” Mr Kiwanda says, alluding to his being torn between serving Buganda Kingdom and his party.

The kingdom and NRM have a historical connection, with the then Crown Prince Ronald Mutebi having been smuggled onto the battlefield to boost the morale of kingdom adherents who fought to have the kingdom restored. But relations between the two centres of power have been uneasy.

Mr Kiwanda likes to argue that differences in ideology within NRM, especially regarding monarchism, should not be a problem, but the reality is different.

President Museveni at some point attributed his fallout with former Vice President Dr Samson Kisekka to the latter’s leaning towards Mengo, Buganda’s power capital. Even the recent sacking of another Vice President, Prof Gilbert Bukenya, is thought to be related to his closeness to Mengo.

Disagreements not new in NRM

At the recent party retreat at Kyankwanzi, some members wanted Mr Kiwanda removed from the leadership of the party’s Buganda Caucus, saying that he goes against party positions.

But Mr Kiwanda tells his fellow NRM members that internal criticism is the way NRM works, not how it fails. He says when there was a change of political system from the so-called Movement system to multi-partyism in 2005, the mindset of “individual merit”, which NRM claimed to champion before then, did not die away.

In the days of “individual merit”, every Ugandan was technically a member of NRM and opposition came from within the party, which the leaders preferred to call a political system. That is how in the 6th Parliament, Mr Kiwanda says, NRM members like former Minister Kabakumba Matsiko formed the Youth Parliamentary Association that opposed many party positions. Others like Winnie Byanyima were also very critical of the party.

In the 7th Parliament, another group of critics emerged from within NRM, later consolidating itself into the Parliamentary Advocacy Forum (Pafo) that opposed the lifting of the two term ceiling on the office of the president.

Mr Kiwanda points to “very” active members of Pafo who are now serving in top government positions, including Local Government Minister Adolph Mwesigye and NRM Chief Whip Justine Lumumba.

In the 8th Parliament, Mr Kiwanda points to Rubanda MP Henry Banyenzaki, who was critical of many government positions but has since been appointed minister.
It is strange, in Mr Kiwanda’s view, that Lumumba is now the one “leading the crusade to chase people out of NRM”.
So what could happen to NRM?

The leadership question is critical, Mr Kiwanda says. “Our challenge is to find someone (a leader) who can host different beliefs.” But then, we put it to him, President Museveni seems to be growing impatient with some of the critics within NRM and has threatened to “sort them out”.

Mr Kiwanda agrees and hazards an explanation. “Probably as one grows older they tend to show their true colours,” adding, “President Museveni was a communist and it seems he is becoming intolerant of federalists.” Edward Babu, the NRM vice chairman for Kampala, says the party’s leadership is engaged in an “assessment of our weaknesses and strengths” and that by 2016 it will have come out with a way forward.

Could the opposition defeat NRM?

What Mr Babu doesn’t say is whether the discussions are centred on the leadership question, but there are indications that it is.

This is probably what inspires Mr Kiwanda and other critical NRM members like Lwemiyaga County MP Theodore Ssekikubo and his Kampala Central counterpart Muhammad Nsereko to speak out openly against NRM and Museveni?
Prof Barya thinks this possible.

He says “the ground is fertile; people are ready to listen to the opposition having been frustrated by NRM and Museveni.” But he writes off the older opposition parties, only focusing on FDC.

In Prof Barya’s view, the performance of Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, recently elected president of Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and FDC’s ability to challenge NRM and Museveni will put determine whether NRM loses power democratically in the foreseeable future.

If NRM loses an election, Mr Mwambutsya predicts, most of its members would join whichever party would have won and NRM would almost crumble. Another factor that could work against NRM when it is out of power is its antagonism with Mengo, “which would make it suffer like UPC has suffered”. UPC, especially after losing power, has found it hard to mobilise in Buganda because of its brawls with Mengo in the 1960s.

Also, Mr Mwambutsya adds, the international connections that are thought to have contributed to NRM’s long stay in power “won’t be there anymore.”

Coup possible?

Prof Barya says in case there is a major crisis, like an economic crisis or Museveni dropping dead, an unconstitutional change of power is “possible”.
That is why, in Prof Barya’s view, “Museveni has created an international insurance policy for himself,” by not only banking on support from America, but also reaching out to other powers like China and Iran.

Museveni could just continue ruling

Barring a major crisis, Mr Khisa says, “Museveni could just continue ruling for a long time.” Mr Mwambutsya says this could especially be possible with the “explicit support or indifference from the West.”

The other possibility, Mwambutsya adds, is that when oil money starts flowing, Museveni could use it to entrench himself further in power.

Elly Karuhanga, a city lawyer who was an NRM legislator for a long time, also believes NRM can continue in power if it gets “born again”. He says the party should “confess its sins and repent”, something he says seems to be starting to happen especially “in the fight against corruption”.

Mr Karuganga says NRM must aim to tackle the new challenges of providing employment, health care and education, having managed to reinstate security. But he also warns that if the party is not reborn, it risks “having a disconnect between the young people and the founders of the party,” an indirect reference to the squabbles that have consumed the party in the recent past.
What if Museveni reforms and retires?
Mr Khisa says that Mr Museveni likes to take people by surprise and that between now and 2016, or a little later, he could embark on “sweeping” reforms to institutionalise the party. Afterwards, Mr Khisa says, he could embark on a process of transferring power and eventually stepping down.

Prof Barya also thinks Mr Museveni is probably planning to retire, “certainly not in 2016 but probably in 2021.” In case he retires, Prof Barya says, “he could be planning to install a puppet leader controlled by the inner circle or a direct family member.”

Possibility of splintering

But would Mr Museveni’s anointed successor succeed? Probably yes, as far as taking over the party is concerned, but may be not as far as winning the national leadership.

This is what happened when former Kenyan President Arap Moi anointed Uhuru Kenyatta, son of founding President Jomo Kenyatta but a relative political novice, to take over KANU in 2001. Kenyatta did take over Kanu, but not the national presidency.

Mr Babu doesn’t want to compare Kanu with NRM, because, he says, Kanu was largely made up of members from another political group, the Kenya Africa Democratic Union (KADU). He says those who had come from KADU didn’t care what happened to Kanu, explaining the massive departures in 2002 when it lost power.

But if Mr Babu’s argument that members who cross from other parties don’t care about the fate of the party join, then NRM has to be very worried. Many of its members, including its chairman Mr Museveni, were originally members of other parties.

Many party members who were not happy with Moi’s choice quit the party, a scenario Mr Mwambutya and Mr Khisa say is possible should Museveni try to impose a successor on the party.

But what about the possibility of splintering even when Museveni is still in charge?
“I don’t expect a serious rebellion from within the party,” says Prof Barya. He expects Museveni to deal decisively with the vocal MPs, probably by expulsion. “If some members are expelled,” Prof Barya says, “the others would be afraid.” Going forward, he predicts, “whoever dissents (within NRM) will be undermined or harassed.”