What the NRM will not say about the vice chairperson position

The National Resistance Movement (NRM) is rebranding. At the end of this month, the ruling party will have a new set of leaders save the chairman slot, which by an unwritten rule, appears ring-fenced for President Museveni.
The vice chairman position, by a resolution of the party’s central executive committee (CEC), which has plenipotentiary powers to vet aspirants, was last week reserved for Moses Kigongo. The position should have seen Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga tussle it out with Hajj Kigongo, who is largely seen as the de facto owner of the number two position. Kadaga will go unopposed as the deputy vice.
But beyond the thwarted Kadaga-Kigongo electoral battle is the race for the regional vice chairpersons. Last Friday, the party’s top decision-making organ opted to let Maj Gen Matayo Kyaligonza go unopposed for the western region vice chairman job after his bush war comrade Maj Gen Kahinda Otafire stepped down.

Mr Odrek Rwabwogo was vetted out of the race, bringing to a halt a rather hotly contested challenge characterised by outbursts, tongue lashing, jabs and coded language that spoke volumes. In one corner of the ring was Mr Rwabwogo and Uganda’s ambassador to Burundi Brig Kyaligonza on the other. Justice minister Otafiire had taken to the fence. When Daily Monitor sought him last week, the maverick bush war fighter said, “I am interested in defeating both of them. I am not interested in what they are doing or saying. I am busy hunting for votes to retain my MP seat.”
Asked what he made of the exchanges between Mr Rwabwogo, an in law to the president, and his fellow bush war hero, Otafire said, “I have seen them attack each other in public. This is not a personal matter, it is about the party. I don’t see why anyone should personalise this contest.”

Attempts to get comments from the two were futile by press time. But now that the fire has been extinguished by CEC, observers still note that the Odrek-Kyaligonza war of words was not everyday business. Here is why it matters, be you in NRM or even apolitical. Mr Rwabwogo, for starters, was clamouring for this position, which would have given him membership to NRM’s National Executive Committee and CEC. These are powerful organs which determine the party’s policy and give legislative direction.

His entry also came at a time when First Lady Janet Museveni, who opted out of the Ruhama Constituency seat, made a surprise move and chose to return as chairperson of NRM in Ntungamo District. This position gives her entry to NEC and possibly CEC on secondment of the party chairman.
Next month, perhaps, President Museveni will chair NEC and CEC meetings which could have an uncanny resemblance to clan meetings if election victory is registered by members of his family.
Members of the first family, either distant or close, have offered themselves for election in varios slots in the ruling party.
Why are members of the first family moving to take charge of NRM’s top decision making organs, some observers are asking? Why did CEC throw out his son in law?

Plans for the 2021 election
Inside sources in the NRM claim Brig Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the first son and commander of the elite Special Forces Command, could emerge as army MP. If we are not reading so much between the lines, if we are not constructing mountains from mere dust, if we are not assuming too much, the thwarted Odrek-Kyaligonza contest could be a pointer to what lies ahead of the political road, possibly a stone thrown unto the water to test the ripples it stirs.
Makerere University political science don Sabiti Makara is reluctant to take the race for the regional vice chairman seat as a mere contestation in the NRM. His reading of the political writing on the wall is that the hot contest for the regional seats has everything to do with NRM leaders positioning themselves for the presidency in a post-Museveni era.
“Power has shifted since the Secretary General position was made bureaucratic. Until recently, that position of vice chairperson was not known to be influential,” Prof Makara told this newspaper in an interview last week.
He adds: “The entry of Mr Rwabwogo has ignited interest in it. There is a possibility of the vice chairman being projected for president. That is why he is clamouring.”
In his last interview with this newspaper, Mr Rwabwogo dismissed a possibility of him eventually running for the number one job, a thing Prof Makara laughs off.

“He cannot tell you. He wants to be part of the core to be able to influence things. It is about succession and people strategising themselves for the Presidency,” he said.
Prof Makara’s school of thought can be subjected to the test with evidence from the past. First, it is obvious that in 2010, the race for secretary general nearly caused paralysis in NRM. Maj Gen Otafire, former vice president Gilbert Bukenya and former premier Amama Mbabazi finished the battle with several bruises. President Museveni allied with Mr Mbabazi, at one time, Prof Bukenya reveals in his biography, summoning him for a tete-a-tete in which he persuaded him to withdraw from the race and retain his vice president job. Mr Mbabazi won the election but left a bitter taste in both Maj Gen Otafire’s and Prof Bukenya’s mouths.

Fast forward to 2014. Mr Mbabazi and Prof Bukenya have since fallen out with Mr Museveni and are offering themselves for the presidency. In fact, Mr Mbabazi was accused of taking advantage of his position as secretary general to undermine President Museveni, hijacking the party to advance his own cause.

Prof Makara opines that the 2016 election might be Museveni’s last show on the ballot paper. That is if he doesn’t break the constitutional chains that limit him, by virtue of the 75-year-age bar akin to the 2005 amendment of the supreme law of the land to scrap term limits.
Therefore, the 2021 election for anyone interested in change could be the real election that will determine the country’s fate. Now that the SG position is appointive, Prof Makara advances his argument, power has shifted to the regional vice chairman slots.
Could this explain why Ms Kadaga seeks to up her game and expand her sphere of influence by aiming higher, this time to be vice to Museveni? Talk that she was eyeing the number one job vanished in the air but cannot be disregarded completely.

Things in the northern region too offer interesting insights into the Makara line of thought. The race brings Gen Moses Ali, the elderly deputy premier whose word in West Nile counts, disaster preparedness minister Hillary Onek, deputy Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah and current vice chairman Sam Engola.
Mr Richard Todwong, the NRM deputy secretary general, is amused by the persistence of the contenders over the years, for the position. “In the past, I was a candidate and we had the same people running against each other. We had myself, the current contenders, Betty Akech and Ayena Odong. We need a vice chairman who can bring the region to the same footing with the rest of Uganda with NRM in terms of governance. We need an active vice chairman,” Mr Todwong said.

Suffice to note, Mr Museveni and NRM’s support in the north has increased. Mr Todwong observes that in the past, the two-decade-long armed conflict in the region could only breed hatred from the population. With the return of peace and recovery programmes, the gigantic support Dr Kizza Besigye enjoyed in 2001 and 2006 has since drastically dropped. In Acholi sub-region alone, NRM, which in the past failed to raise candidates in elective positions, now fields candidates for virtually all elective offices.
The resuscitation of NRM’s political life in the north could explain why leaders such as Mr Oulanyah are projecting themselves as party fanatics. Mr Oulanyah has been uncharacteristically generous in his praise of the President, a man he once chided, then as a firebrand UPC legislator. These days, he sometimes compares Mr Museveni to Jesus Christ, claiming that he is a messiah of sorts.

The race for the vice chairperson position in eastern region seems to attract less excitement with Mike Mukula, the incumbent still politically active. Central region and Buganda region too have taken on a low note.
If the thought lines of Prof Makara and other political observers familiar with the NRM party are anything to go by, that is, that there is a clear move for members to strategise and position themselves for a post-Museveni era, then the western and northern region vice chairperson race offers that insight. Anyone looking to succeed Mr Museveni looks at the NRM hierarchy as a platform. First, because the regional vice chairperson and national vice chairperson are elected by delegates, about 10,000 of them, from across the country.
That is a wide base.

If we are to believe the party’s word, the NRM has leadership structures that stretch as deep as each of Uganda’s 57,000 villages. It enjoys a massive majority in Parliament and district local councils. The party’s elective positions alone, from the 57,000 village NRM chairpersons and their attendant support political base (committees) gives up to the national level, with the multiplier effect, secures one at least one million votes before even polling day. The thirst for the NRM vice chairperson position, after the secretary general was made appointive, is therefore a game of strategy in Museveni’s succession queue. Or so we think?