Why NRM lost Rukungiri Woman MP seat

Rukungiri.

A strange part of the Rukungiri by-election is that the ruling party’s campaign was heavily driven by two former ministers - Maj Gen Jim Muhwezi and Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde – both former Bush War fighters who served under President Museveni but were both recently dropped from Cabinet.
Another similarity between these two is that after serving in important positions in government, intelligence and the army, they both disagreed with President Museveni shortly after the turn of the century, and he dropped them from his service.
He then re-instated them to serve in Cabinet at different times, but dropped each of them after short stints.
The latest was Gen Tumukunde, who was dropped as minister of Security in March 2018 having occupied the position only since June 2016.
One issue that came up in Rukungiri during the vote hunt was why President Museveni was prepared to rely on these two individuals who he had sacked from his Cabinet. Different accounts pointed to the possibility that the voters did not feel that their sons from Rukungiri were valued enough by President Museveni and were, therefore, perhaps not qualified to campaign for the NRM candidate.
The other matter was about Gen Muhwezi, who a number of NRM members felt was very imposing when he was minister of Information in the lead up to the 2016 election and accuse him of having imposed Ms Winnie Masiko as the NRM flag bearer when some think the rightful winner was Ms Sezi Mbaguta, a former minister, who also ran as an Independent but came a distant third.
For this reason, it appeared on a number of occasions that NRM in Rukingiri was too divided to cogently challenge a team of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) led by four-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, who also hails from Rukungiri and is easily the most popular politician from the district.
When President Museveni made donations to different groups in the district amounting to Shs5b, a number of recipients showed up to donate some of it to Dr Besigye when he was next in Rukungiri Town.
Dr Besigye polled more votes in Rukungiri District than President Museveni in the 2016 election, and a combination of his popularity and mobilisation abilities, coupled with NRM’s weaknesses and divisions, in the end ensured that FDC captured the third of the four MP slots in Rukungiri.