Prime
39 years of the NRM: Fundamental change or chant in politics?

President Museveni
What you need to know:
- It’s 39 years since NRM captured power in 1986. At the time, Uganda had come from multiple coups and political divide that when Mr Museveni and team promised a fundamental change, it’s an idea a generation bought into.
President Museveni is in Mubende presiding over celebrations commemorating 39 years since the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) shot its way to power.
One cannot help, but wind the block back to January 29, 1986, when a youthful Yoweri Museveni stood on the steps of Parliament and gave what came to be known as the “Fundamental Change speech”.
“No one should think that what is happening today is a mere change of guard: It is a fundamental change in the politics of our country. In Africa we have seen so many changes that change, as such, is nothing short of mere turmoil. We have had one group getting rid of another one, only for it to be worse than the group it displaced. Please do not count us in that group of people: the National Resistance Movement is a clear-headed movement with clear objectives and a good membership” he said.
Some of the objectives that Mr Museveni was talking about had been captured in the NRM’s 10-point programme, which spelt out how the country would be returned to a path of social and economic recovery.
Point number one of the programme was “the restoration of democracy through regular elections”. The promise was one of elections that would be “free of corruption and manipulation of the population”.
Now, this year’s celebrations come at a time when activities aimed at delivering the country another general election are gaining momentum. Last week the Electoral Commission (EC) launched a nationwide update of the voter register in line with the revised roadmap for the 2025/2026 General Elections.
In the circumstances, one cannot help, but subject the NRM’s performance in as far as delivering on the promise of delivering democracy and other points on the 10-point programme to tough scrutiny. Some believe that Mr Museveni and the NRM took the country for a ride with promises of democracy.
Mr Faruk Kirunda, the special presidential assistant in-charge of the press and mobilisation, who also doubles as the deputy spokesperson of the President, is quick to defend the NRM.
“That the promotion of democracy was number one on the 10-Point Programme should tell you how important it was. Democracy is the bedrock of human dignity, human rights, governance, economic participation, justice, law and order and security.
“What lie could it have been when Ugandans for the first time got to elect a President in 1996 and are guaranteed that right every five years? What lie is it when they elect Members of Parliament and local council leaders?”Mr Kirunda wonders.
City lawyer Dan Wandera Ogalo dismisses Mr Kirunda’s argument, saying that holding of regular elections should not be considered as a measure of democracy, especially if those elections will be neither free nor fair.
“So I think this pretence of going through elections - that you are holding elections and tha people are going to debate is something that we should re-examine,” Mr Ogalo argues.
Mr Ogalo says that it is high time the country re-examined the idea of elections, especially under the NRM.
Some schools of thought are of the view that elections are to the NRM what ecdysis is to reptiles. Just like ecdysis enables the reptiles to shed off old skin, elections help validate a dictatorship passing off as a democratic institution.
“Saying that ‘elections are aimed at validating a dictatorship’ is a paradox. If one is elected, that’s not a dictatorship because power belongs to the people. It’s the ‘people’s dictatorship’, in which case I don’t know what claim those complaining would have,” Mr Kirunda says.
Competition
One of the biggest accusations against the NRM has been that it has continued to operate as if those who lead it do not appreciate the importance of competition in the maintenance of a healthy democracy. Whereas we are inching towards 20 years since the country was returned to a multiparty dispensation, the operations of Opposition political parties remain heavily curtailed.
That does not look like the image of the genuine democracy that the NRM promised 39 years ago Prof Paul Wangoola, a former Makerere University don and former member of the National Consultative Council (NCC), which served as Uganda’s Parliament following the ouster of President Amin, says that whereas it is true that elections are held regularly, one cannot say that the NRM is innocent of charges of “manipulation of the population” contrary to the promise made in point number one. He points to the campaign ahead of the 1996 elections where Mr Museveni’s campaign team sent out an advert that suggested that a vote for Mr Museveni’s main challenger, Dr Kawanga Ssemogerere would precipitate a return to the kind of chaos that had reigned in the 1970s and first half of the 1980s when Apollo Milton Obote and later Gen Tito Okello, were in charge.
"A vote for Ssemogerere is a vote for Obote,” read one of the adverts.
In 1999, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report titled, Hostile to Democracy, in which it accused the elect Mr Museveni team in a chapter, The Movement System and Political Freedoms in Uganda, of having used skulls from the 1981-1985 bush war in Luweero in a campaign against Ssemogerere.
“One of Museveni's presidential election posters featured a picture of skulls and bones beside a mass grave in Luweero, with the caption: "Don't forget the past. Over one million Ugandans, our brothers, sisters, family and friends, lost their lives. Your Vote Could Bring It Back," the HRW report read in parts.
Not once did Mr Museveni or any other leader in the NRM speak out about the controversial and manipulative adverts.

President Museveni (right) campaigns during the 2021 presidential elections. PHOTO | FILE
The extent of the impact has never been quantified, but Mr Museveni was declared winner of the May 9, 1996 elections with 4,428,119 or 74.2 percent of the vote against Ssemogerere’s 1,416,139 or 23.8 per cent of the vote.
“Can you authoritatively say that the use of images of skulls from the bush war days was not manipulation of the voting population?”asks Prof Wangoola.
Mr Moses Byaruhanga, the senior presidential advisor in charge of political mobilisation, scoffs at those who accuse the NRM of having manipulated the voting populace. He argues that it was about reminding the population about what was at stake.
“You cannot call that manipulation. In an election, one appeals to the voters. I am appealing to the voters to vote for me because of what I stand for. Mr Museveni’s manifesto said that he would guarantee security and that the country would not go back to where it had come from. That was not manipulation. It was only telling the truth.
Anyone saying that it was manipulation of voters is being out of topic,”Mr Byaruhanga says.
Controversy
It should at the same time not be forgotten that every election has ended in controversy. Whereas Dr Ssemogerere did not challenge the outcome of the 1996 election, he declined to “accept the result as valid,” saying the election had been riddled with irregularities include ing rigging, voter intimidation and use of doctored voter registers.
Those claims were lent credence on October 16, 1998, when the late Charles Owor, one of the seven commissioners of the Interim Electoral Commission (IEC) told a press conference in Kampala that “underage voting” had been carried out to favour the NRM. Again on October 23, 1998, while appearing on Radio One FM’s talk show, Spectrum, Mr Owor insisted that there had been “fundamental flaws in the election”.
It has always been ironic that the first election under what was meant to be a fundamentally changed political landscape was deemed to have been fundamentally flawed.
Mr Museveni was declared winner of the 2001 with 5,123,360 or 69.33 percent of the vote followed by Dr Kizza Besigye with 2,055,795 or 27.82 percent of the vote, and winner of the 2006 presidential elections with 4,109,449 or 59.26 percent of the vote against Dr Besigye’s 2,592,954 or 37.39 per cent of the vote.
Dr Besigye challenged the outcomes on both occasions. In 2001 the Supreme Court by a vote of three to two upheld the result, but the majority noted that whereas cheating had occurred, it did “not affect the results of the election in a substantial manner”.
In 2006, three out of the five judges upheld the election. The judges argued that whereas they had found that “the principles of free and fair elections were compromised by bribery and intimidation or violence in some areas of the country” and “principles of equal suffrage, transparency of the votes, and secrecy of the ballot were undermined by multiple voting and vote stuffing,” they were not sufficient to nullify the election.
Dr Besigye did not contest the outcome of the 2011 polls, opting to take the matter to “the public court”.
The 2016 and 2021 election petitions followed in a similar pattern of the courts conceding that there had been irregularities, but falling short of annulling the result. Mr Byaruhanga says that the courts have always been right in not annulling the elections because of issues around the magnitude of the impact of irregularities on the outcome.
“If the magnitude was small, say you have lost an election by 100,000 votes and the malpractices were many, it indicates that the person who lost could have won so the court can annul, but if someone has defeated the other by over two million votes, an election would not be overturned simply because someone says that when he went to vote he found that someone had voted on his behalf,” Mr Byaruhanga argues.
Polarisation
The situation though, points to increasing polarisation in the populace. The Bertelsmann Stiftung's Transformation Index (BTI) 2024, analyses and evaluates how developing countries and countries in transition go about changes aimed at moving them towards greater democracy and free market economies based on performances in 17 indicators including, among others, political participation, the rule of law, stability of emocratic institutions and political and social integration, concludes that the politics have over the years become quite contentious.
“The country has been caught in a state of contentious politics, marked by opposition defiance and a lack of consensus on the basic rules for political engagement,” it says. It adds that “the previously existing elite political consensus has broken down, and contentious politics now dominate the landscape”.
Low voter turnout
It should, however, be noted that the numbers that turn out to vote have been below 70 percent of the number of registered voters over the last six elections. The only time it was above the 70 percent mark was in 1996 when 72.6 percent of the registered voters showed up.
In 1996 voter turnout was 72.6 percent, but dropped to 70.3 percent in 2001 and 69.19 percent in 2006. In 2011, the number fell down to 59.29 percent, but rose to 67.61 percent in 2016 before falling back to 59.35 percent in 2021.
Lower voter turnout has always been linked to the government's failure to carry out meaningful reforms, an argument which Mr Byaruhanga do es not agree with.
“We have never had voter turnout below 50 percent. Even in an exam remember the pass mark is 51 per cent. Even to win a presidential election you need 51 percent, so if 60 percent of the voting population come and vote you want to say that is low?
What is voter turnout around the world? In fact ours could be among the highest in the world,” Mr Byaruhanga says.
Sections of civil society have always argued that “government’s reluctance to consider popular progressive electoral reforms, in order to address electoral deficits that have afflicted previous elections, has dented the credibility of electoral processes,” and turned elections into a ritual.
Mr Byaruhanga does not see any need for reform, saying that Uganda’s electoral processes are some of the most elaborate, with windows for candidates to establish with certainty what they garner at the polls even before the results are announced by the Electoral Commission.
What is required are a few adjustments to how elections are managed. The problem though, what it is that needs to be adjusted, leaving some wondering whether it was a fundamental change or chant in the politics.