Stuck in the bush? Why NRM seems unable to end chaos in internal party processes

In another, one of the party’s top guns in Buganda was seen being chased away from a polling station.

The youth in Lwengo District were in yet another clip seen trading kicks and punches while others went at each other with huge sticks.

Those were just a few of the scenes of violence that characterised a process that is now known to have culminated in the death of three people: Swaliki Lwayanga, a resident of Luuka; Peter Kaluya, a resident of Mayuge; and Silvano Bikorwomuhangi, a resident of Kabale.

Lwayanga died following a shooting incident in Luuka that left Peterson Nabugo and Ivan Oketch nursing serious injuries. Kaluya and Bikorwomuhangi are suspected to have been beaten to death.

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Mr Tanga Odoi, the chairperson of the party’s Electoral Commission (EC), has since blamed some of the violence on interference in the elections by some Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) and Members of Parliament (MPs).

“The RDCs are part of the system, the ears and eyes of the government on the ground, but some of them overstepped their mandate and messed up the exercise, giving orders contrary to our election guidelines,” Mr Odoi told Monitor in an interview earlier in the week.

History of chaos

Whereas Mr Odoi just might have a point, one cannot really blame last week’s chaos on RDCs and MPs.

NRM internal processes have been synonymous with violence since the primaries of September 2010, the first that were held following the approval on January 12, 2010, by the NRM’s national executive committee (NEC) of the introduction of adult suffrage in the party’s elections.

At the time, the party was contending with the phenomena of independent candidates who had come up to contest against the party’s official flag bearers during the 2006 elections. Many of them had alleged manipulation of the electoral colleges.

Adult suffrage had been expected to end allegations of manipulation and, therefore, cure the problem of independent candidates.

No one had anticipated the kind of chaos, violence and accusations of rigging that were reported during the September to October 2010 NRM primaries. The result was that there were even more independent candidates.

Some of the notable personalities that lost the primaries, but insisted on standing as independent candidates included Mr Peter Claver Mutuluza, who had lost to Ms Amelia Kyambadde in Mawokota North, Mpigi; Mr Alex Kamugisha who lost to Gen Jim Muhwezi in Rujumbura County, Rukungiri; Lt Hannington Basakana, who has lost to minister Daudi Migereko in Butembe County, Jinja; Ms Elizabeth Ociti Alimadi who had lost the Amuru District Women’s ticket to Ms Betty Bigombe and; Mr Santos Eruaga who had lost to Gen Moses Ali in Adjumani West.

If it was meant to be a healing knife with which surgical operations were to be conducted on abscesses called 'independents', it failed in a spectacular manner. It emerged that wherever it was applied, a new abscess would appear.

Mutation?

In 2010, most of the chaos was blamed on confusion in the villages and constituencies arising out of manipulation of the registers and internal weaknesses, including failure to hire key personnel, lack of office premises and lack of funds.

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The NRM is now more organised than it was 15 years ago. It, for example, has its own permanent home on Kyadondo Road in Kampala, it has hired permanent staff and has budget lines for most of its activities, but it appears that those will not suffice to deliver a clean internal process.

Whereas there were no reports of death in 2010, deaths have been reported in subsequent primaries. It would appear that the problem has mutated over the years, but with violence being a mainstay. What went wrong?

Unacceptability

Mr Emmanuel Dombo, the party’s director for communication, argues that the biggest cause of violence has been the failure to accept elections as a method of changing leadership.

“We have, for instance, the LCs. We have not had LC elections for many years now, but some people would rather stay without an election than have one, and they lose. So, people who were not prepared to accept the outcome or to accept their fate to be determined by the electorate were the biggest causers of violence,” Mr Dombo says.
Constitutional lawyer Dan Wandera Ogalo says the picture that Mr Dombo is painting is a creation of the NRM. He argues that it is because the NRM has failed to grow a culture of democracy that the number of people who wish to cling to positions of leadership is on the rise.

“We have a saying in law that, ‘you cannot give what you do not have’. So there must be democracy first in order for it to be given in the NRM and for the NRM to also give it to the country. If people are clinging on and they do not want to accept elections as a mechanism for changing leadership, it is because we have refused to nurture democracy,” Mr Ogalo says.

He claims that the people in the NRM should be the last to be surprised when violence occurs because the NRM is the single biggest promoter of acts of violence.

“If NRM people see violence in national elections, if they beat up people during parliamentary and presidential elections, why won’t they beat themselves up? If they do it in national elections in order to cling to being an MP or in order to cling on being President, then you expect that even in NRM primaries they will do the same. They are just repeating what they do,” Mr Ogalo says.

Culture of violence

However, there are those who argue that violence is simply within the DNA of NRM. They argue that the NRM is a child of violence, was bred, nurtured on violence and thrives on violence, which, in the circumstances, makes it impossible to operate in a violence-free manner.

Prof Paul Wangoola, a former Member of the National Consultative Council (NCC), which was Uganda’s Parliament following the ouster of the Idi Amin regime, says the NRM has a very long history and culture of violence. That makes it impossible for the party to preside over any violence-free processes, even when they are internal.

“It is not possible for Mr Museveni to preside over anything peaceful. Those who cause mayhem cannot be the same people to preside over peaceful processes. They introduced commercialisation and militarisation of the politics. They benefit from it,” Prof Wangoola says.

Mr Ogalo weighs in, saying Uganda’s recent walk on a path of embracing violence can be traced back to Mr Museveni’s decision to take up arms against the Obote II government following the disputed 1980 elections.

“President Museveni was not satisfied with the election and filed an election petition challenging Mr Sam Kutesa’s victory, but never followed it up. He instead chose violence. So it (violence) is what propelled him into power and, unfortunately, the bush structure is what became the government in 1986. The bush structure was really violence itself. We did not transit that structure,” Mr Ogalo says.

It should be remembered that Mr Kutesa, Mr Museveni and Mr Guchwa Mingyi were parliamentary candidates for the Mbarara North seat.

Mr Kutesa, who contested as a candidate of the Democratic Party (DP) and won with 15,657 votes, followed by Mr Mingyi, the candidate of the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), who garnered 12,747 votes. Mr Museveni, who was also the leader of the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), came third with 12,682 votes.

Mr Museveni, through his lawyers, Hunter and Greg, petitioned the High Court seeking to annul the election on the grounds that some of the registered voters did not appear on the voters’ register and that the registers were not displayed for inspection as required by the law. As Mr Ogalo noted, he did not follow up on the petition.

Stuck in the bush

Mr Ogalo believes that despite having been in power for an initial 10 years, a period during which the 1995 Constitution was written and promulgated, Uganda has never transitioned from the bush structure.
“Although we made a Constitution which should have in effect transited us from the bush structure, in reality, the bush structure remained. It is, therefore, not surprising that you will see violence in the NRM elections,” he says.
Mr Dombo is, however, quick to defend the government, saying those who often accuse it of perpetrating violence are not as squeaky clean as they claim to be.

“Most of the people accusing NRM are not necessarily good followers of the law themselves, and they would want to embarrass the NRM by portraying the NRM as people who have confronted them. I know in NRM we have our own flaws, which need to be addressed. The type of things which you saw in the Kawempe by-elections by the JATT and other security agencies. Those ones undermine our credibility and the mileage we have so far covered in democracy. But you cannot avoid those isolated cases,” Mr Dombo says.

Mr Dombo was referring to the March 16 Kawempe North parliamentary by-election during which journalists, and Opposition politicians and their supporters were brutalised by members of the security forces.

Questions

However, why an internal party election should kick off so much violence has always been a subject for debate. What is it about being a flagbearer of the NRM that would make one unleash violence?
Bugiri Municipality MP Asuman Basalirwa says people become increasingly desperate to become official flagbearers because it is assumed that it makes one’s task in the general election a lot easier.

“If an area is dominated by one particular political party, like the NRM is dominant in western Uganda, then people become desperate to become the flag bearers because it is believed that it enhances one’s chances of winning when the parliamentary elections are called,” Mr Basalirwa says.

Whereas it may not apply to political parties in the Opposition, being NRM’s flag bearer comes with advantages that may contribute considerably to a candidate’s campaign, especially in areas dominated by NRM.

Mr Dombo recently told Monitor that once one is elected as its candidate, NRM pays their nomination fees, provides them with a campaign kitty, and prints their campaign posters and fliers.

Such a candidate also gets to have the party chairman, Mr Museveni, to campaign for them.

Victory in the MP elections would open up the doors for one to access, among other things, a monthly salary of Shs25 million; a one off vehicle allowance of Shs150 million; a subsistence allowance of Shs4.5million a month; a town running allowance of Shs1 million per a month, a medical allowance of Shs500,000 per a month; a sitting allowance of Shs50,000 for committee meetings; a plenary sitting allowance of Shs150,000 for plenary sessions; an inland travel per diem for Shs150,000 a night; a foreign travel per diem of $520 (approximately Shs1.9 million), air tickets when on official business and facilities like IPads.

Such perks are not available to other working Ugandans. It would appear that the prospect of accessing them makes violence an attractive option.

Weaknesses?

However, well as we might have an idea about what it is that is making violence an option, it has always baffled that members of a party that has constitutionalised mechanisms for dispute resolution would resort to violence instead of filing formal complaints.

Mr Ogalo says it goes back to believing in a philosophy of violence.
“The philosophy of violence is not something new. It is founded on Marxist-Leninist theories. It is not something which we are just pulling out of the blue,” he says.

The problem is that there are fears Tuesday’s chaos was only a curtain raiser with worse to come when the races for flagbearers for Parliament are called. Can the party do better than it did last week?

Mr Dombo attributed some of last week’s violence to lack of civic education and poor deployment of law enforcement officials.

“When you just announce an election and people who are not prepared come, the likelihood of them misbehaving is high, but we also underestimated the likelihood of violence, so the security deployment was inadequate,” Mr Dombo says.

What are the chances that they will use the time in between now and the next round of primaries to conduct adequate civic education and work out a better deployment plan?

“There is commitment and an effort to go forward. I believe we must be better over time,” Mr Dombo says.
It is a belief that many will be clinging to.

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