NRM has a Museveni master-key but it will miss Mbabazi, Bidandi

On the eve of the NRM party primaries last week, President Museveni deployed the Army to help the police maintain law and order during the process. Normally, the police ask the military for back-up; this time the directive, delivered by the Commander-In-Chief by military radio, had the effect of informing the police that they would be working with the army.
A few weeks earlier, the President had adjudicated at least three disputes. The first was between Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga and her Deputy Jacob L’Okori Oulanyah whose relationship is as warm as an ice cube. Then he sat in on a fight between Ms Kadaga and her political ‘frenemies’ from Busoga, before asking Francis Babu not to run against party national vice chairman Moses Kigongo.
A day before the primaries, the party chairman would throw a spanner in the works, opening the vote to people not on the party electoral registers. It isn’t clear how much of the ensuing confusion resulted from this last-minute shifting of goalposts, but when pandemonium then broke out across the country, it was still to Museveni that the police and party officials looked for resolution.
In between all that chaos, the President also found time to swear in his two appointees to the top positions in the Judiciary. Next up on the President’s calendar is to sort out the entanglement in Sembabule and decide, between his brother and daughter-in-law, which branch of the family takes the constituency.
Thus in only a few weeks, we have seen presidential power at its peak: In charge of the Executive and its coercive instruments, the military and the police; as arbiter, the de-facto in-charge of the Legislature; the king-maker in the Judiciary; the career-maker and breaker in the party; and the prince of peace among relatives, friends and in-laws (let whoever has heard inform another). He will soon appoint a new governor at the Central Bank, not long after sacking key players at the Electoral Commission. 
It is real-time demonstration of the expansive powers the Constitution baked into the presidency, and accumulated through decades of incumbency. 
But there are two problems:One, however many push-ups Mzee can make, he cannot push back the steady ticking of time. Secondly, the more centralised power has become around the individual, the more hollowed out the political structures around him have become.
If Mzee Moses Kigongo, the number-two in the party, needs his boss to ward off rivals from a position he has held for 30+ years, would he order the army boss to oversee party primaries if he was president or would he be advised to leave matters of generals to generals? Would the ebullient Justine Kasule Lumumba, the party secretary general, convene and diffuse a dispute between the Speaker and her Deputy? Would they take her calls if Museveni were no longer in the picture? To put it politely, it is possible, but not probable. 
The deification of Museveni within the NRM and the departure of possible rivals, from Kategaya to Bidandi to Mbabazi have left a top-heavy party ever more dependent on him for everything, from raising money to settling petty disputes.
One possible outcome, when Museveni finally and inevitably departs the scene, is the party imploding as rivals, all believing themselves to be superior, but few if any really being, rip into each other to seize control. The current fights in Ntungamo, Sembabule, Jinja and elsewhere would be mere skirmishes compared to those pending pitted battles. Another related outcome is that the absence of a political succession plan then leaves the door open to the military to come in and “calm” things with a ‘transitional’ government.
In outcome one, NRM party members will look back and perhaps rue the mob justice they subjected those who dared compete internally to, finally realising that those contests would have made the party stronger than the sum of its parts. They might even miss Mbabazi and Bidandi Ssali!
Outcome two is well known to Ugandans of a certain age and older: The last time armed folks came in as a transition…let’s just say they are still making arrangements to begin the process of starting to think about transitioning. One day, we will look back and see that the stronger an individual leader is, the weaker the institutions meant to check their power are, and that it rarely ends well.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and  poor man’s freedom fighter. 
[email protected] 
@Kalinaki