Is the NRM (O) kicupuli party? July 20 - 26, 2003 A few weeks ago, everybody who reads Uganda’s local newspapers was treated to the blazing headline: 1.2 MILLION PEOPLE SIGN FOR NRM PARTY… or something of the same import. People power was supposedly asserting its voice, making the traditional parties (DP, UPC & CP) tremble in their foundations after President Yoweri Museveni had told a gathering of Movement officials that he was now advocating the “freeing” of political parties.
Since that speech, of course, seminars, demonstrations and even graduation celebrations have been disbanded with the same pathological zeal, as had been the rule over several years, as long as those gatherings smacked of any intention to promote opposition party interests. But returning to the NRM (O), what did the reported 1.2 million people sign for when they endorsed the proposed organisation? It would seem natural for the advocates of a new party to publish or spread word about the things this party will stand for; the ideas and causes it intends to espouse; the things which separate it from the other parties in the field. To that end, the brains spearheading the NRM (O) tell us that their party is both a new thing and also at once the same old Movement “system”, which is being transformed into an “organisation”. Our lawyers have burned a lot of energy in exotic arguments to demonstrate the legality or illegality of the NRM’s manoeuvres. But the matter is not even really a legal or constitutional conundrum. It is a very simple philosophical problem; actually a matter of common sense. You simply cannot do what the NRM (O) people say they are doing, unless you can simultaneously wear your shirt properly and also inside out. However, by making that absurd claim, the NRM (O) people are evading the need to think hard and tell the nation why anybody should follow them. By saying simply that the organisation will remain non-ideological, non-sectarian, all-embracing…and all those hackneyed things they used to claim for the NRM as a “Movement”, adding only that this time they will lock out people who want to “leave”, they are reducing the proposed party to nothing more than a gravy train; the same train that has been grinding the rails. The effect should be to formalise the comradeship of people who do not necessarily believe in anything, except retaining their access to the spoils of power, and attracting new members of the same ilk. If one were to break down the 1.2 million signatories into different categories, it would not be surprising to find that many of them are petty local council officials and ntandikwa beneficiaries to whom the crumbs from the high table are infinitely preferable to the often unrewarding toil in the fields in the countryside. He who controls the train, controls the crumbs. How many peasants and peasant chiefs would dare a system that has spent seventeen years driving home the message that it is invincible? But if the new party does not go beyond merely prolonging the status quo, then it will be faced with the old charge that the NRM (O) is Museveni, and Museveni is the NRM (O). President Museveni’s proposal to dilute the power of Parliament vis a vis the presidency, to commandeer the judiciary and to remove presidential term limits as a package would seem to encourage this view. And yet, at the head of the team steering the new party into some kind of recognisable form, are people like Mr Bidandi Ssali and Hajji Moses Kigongo, who – in spite of contradictory remarks – are generally believed not to favour the direction taken by Mr Museveni and the Movement’s National Executive Council at Kyankwanzi a few months back. A number of questions follow inevitably: In the absence of a clear set of ideas the new party stands for, and with Museveni as its de facto chief, are the 1.2 million people to assume that they endorsed a party that will champion Museveni’s ideas? Or did they endorse another party that will push the supposed Bidandi Ssali line? Then, supposing the whole thing is an elaborate conspiracy, which has yet to open all its layers? Before these questions are answered clearly, the 1.2 million people might have put their signatures to a very dubious blank cheque, ekicupuli, in the name of a political organization. © 2003 The Monitor Publications ------------- He it is Who created for you all that is on earth...He is the All-knower of everything. Swaddaq Allahu Al-Adhim. Michael Bwambuga. __________________________________________________________________ McAfee VirusScan Online from the Netscape Network. Comprehensive protection for your entire computer. Get your free trial today! http://channels.netscape.com/ns/computing/mcafee/index.jsp?promo=393397 Get AOL Instant Messenger 5.1 free of charge. Download Now! http://aim.aol.com/aimnew/Aim/register.adp?promo=380455
