Musaazi Namiti
If they are not made up, numbers do not lie. And if you care about the plain unvarnished truth, numbers are very good at delivering it. Let us look at numbers to try to understand why the governing National Resistance Movement (NRM), even with the best will in the world, was never going to win the Kawempe North by-election. In the 2021 election, the late Muhammad Ssegirinya, who ran on the National Unity Platform (NUP) ticket, won the seat with 41,197 votes.
Sulaiman Sserwadda Kidandala, who was an Independent candidate, came a distant second with 7,512 votes, and the candidate of the ruling NRM, Tom John fisher Kasenge, polled 6,946 votes. The numbers suggest Ssegirinya, who died this past January, received about 5.93 times as many votes as the NRM candidate. This was remarkable.
It was an undeniable rout. In fact, some would even call it a rout to end all routs. If you are a political party that cares about the truth, this kind of defeat forces you to do some soul-searching and ask: How did we end up becoming an almost unelectable party? Another takeaway we can draw from these numbers — and it is probably the most important — is that a candidate vying for the Kawempe North constituency and is not on the NUP ticket is always going to have a hard time winning the seat. Ssegirinya’s resounding win demonstrated that Kawempe North was solidly behind NUP.
The NRM would only stand a chance if, after the 2021 election, it did great things for the constituency, such as improving social service delivery, creating jobs for young people, etc. But we all know what the NRM did. It arrested Ssegirinya in connection with the killings in Masaka, where nearly 30 people were hacked to death by machete-wielding assailants.
While there is nothing wrong with arresting and prosecuting a politician who has committed a crime, the State failed to adduce incriminating evidence against Ssegirinya, leading many to ask whether the charges against him were real. Ssegirinya remained behind bars even as his health deteriorated. To say this has alienated Kawempe North voters is an understatement.
Ssegirinya may have had serious underlying health issues before his arrest, but it is hard for people who overwhelmingly voted for him not to blame his death on the NRM government. Those who voted for NUP’s Elias Luyimbazi Nalukoola, now the new MP for Kawempe North, did not only want the party to retain the seat but they were also protesting the gratuitously violent conduct of the campaigns by the NRM.
Security forces beat up NUP supporters and journalists covering the by-election. Some journalists had their work equipment damaged. Many are nursing serious injuries. The violence was hard to understand, and many people knew it was not going to result in any electoral advantage for the NRM. The NRM has said it wants another election organised, but it is ignoring the numbers.
Again. Its candidate, Faridah Nambi, polled 8,593 votes against Mr Nalukoola’s 17,764 votes. This wide margin is not imaginary. It shows NUP’s popularity is still strong. I think that even if the Kawempe North by-election is repeated 20 times, an NRM candidate cannot win — just as you would not get a NUP candidate winning in some constituencies in western Uganda, where the NRM still enjoys support. Kampala constituencies will always be won by the Opposition. Why? The NRM is hated in the city. There are no two ways about it. The problem is that nobody close to Mr Museveni, the party chairman, can pluck up the courage to say: “Mr President, we will never win in this city. People no longer love us.”
Mr Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
[email protected]
