Chaos is the way NRM works, not how it fails

Just when we thought we were getting to a point where we could theoretically prevent rigging or make it minimal, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) primaries threw the door open to all manner of mayhem and mischief and showed how little we’ve learnt from the 1980 elections.
Then, the rigging was brazen and sometimes brutal, ranging from voters being threatened to candidates being kidnapped.

Although we had the skulls and Obote phobia in 1996 and have had the army, violence and other forms of rigging since then, it has become progressively that little bit harder to steal an election.

Well, until now. So many ballot papers for the NRM primaries ended up on the black market that there were not enough for legitimate voters to cast. Candidates were threatened while others helped ‘store’ ballot boxes and papers in their homes or transport them in their cars. Somehow, candidates who were willing to assist the party in this way were rewarded by party members who voted for them overwhelmingly.

Violence and threats of violence kept the police busy across the country trying to save NRM members from one another, sometimes resorting to the bullets and teargas that opposition candidates and supporters are more familiar with.

The NRM, a party that was formed allegedly to fight injustice and which fought a guerrilla war to oust a government that had rigged its way to power, today has hundreds of party flag bearers who are accused of rigging their way onto the party ticket.

Despite all the petitions flying in from across the country, the elections will not be cancelled because this chaos has become the way the party works, not the way it fails.
None of the disputes in the NRM primaries have been about ideology or a difference in opinion over how to deal with the country’s problems. They have been about tribe, academic qualifications, how close people are to President Museveni, and how much money they are willing to offer voters as bribes.

In breaking up the country into tiny, unsustainable districts, the NRM has given poor peasants in the countryside the empty jerry cans of possibility. They have been given a sense of empowerment within their small ponds while their collective power to make national demands has been taken away from them.

NRM officials have triumphantly described the grassroots reach and elections as the party’s strongest point but could this be the start of the decline of the empire?
Half the NRM party parliamentary candidates, especially those from the grand new districts of nothingness, can sleepwalk into Parliament next year without lifting a finger. But how long before those peasants realise that the name of your district does not always mean more prosperity in the same way that sleeping in a garage does not turn one into a car?

And what to do with all those disgruntled NRM supporters who feel cheated of their time and money through the fiasco and are banned from running as independents?
In the past those who lost bitterly like Joy Kabatsi in Sembabule were offered political appointments to keep them busy but how do you employ the thousands who say they were cheated in the primaries and how do you keep them in the party?

In becoming too strong, too rich and too arrogant, the NRM has made its split inevitable. You can create tens of ministries; hundreds of districts and thousands of patronage networks but folding a Shs50,000 note does not turn it into Shs100,000.

The NRM promised a fundamental change when it went to the Bush in 1981. Someone ought to walk into the party’s delegates’ conference meeting room and ask the real members of that NRM to please stand up. It would be good to count those who stand up – assuming the tallying won’t be rigged.
dkalinaki@ug.nationmedia.com