Surviving A Founder: NRM’s Dark Fate After Museveni.

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA





Kampala--For all its seemingly convincing ubiquity and organisational power, there’s something perceptively phoney about the National Resistance Movement, NRM: an aura of some inexplicable oddity that the party just seems unable to shake off.

Yes, exteriorly, the NRM, currently in power, makes an impression of strength, institutional order and focus, observers say. But for any ruling party, it’s pretty easy to project that impression and NRM’s overwhelming presence might be of little help to anyone trying to weight its real worth. In fact its real test will come when it faces the challenge of surviving the political demise of the founding chairman, Mr. Yoweri Museveni.

Although the NRM is young and has a lot to do to transform itself into a functioning, robust and sustainable entity there’s little that has been achieved in the way of building the party’s internal capacity. There are so many basics that have eluded it thus far that make political observers fret about its ability to survive a change of government in Uganda.

All through the past elections and other party activities, the NRM has counted on Mr Museveni to mobilise all the requisite funds and there has not been any discernible effort on the part of the party leadership to develop lasting and institutionalised mechanisms of generating money to fund its spending needs. Plans to acquire some properties that could in future fund the organisation have badly foundered for the party’s lifetime to date and there isn’t any sign the party’s troubled finances might improve in the foreseeable future, foreshadowing a dark time when its current fundraiser-in-chief exits.


An August 27th analysis last year in Daily Monitor of the NRM’s ailments serves as a microcosm of the terrible fate that might strike this party in a post-Museveni Uganda. The story for instance quoted a source who claimed that the NRM’s landlord had threatened to eject it from its headquarters on No. 10 Kyadodo Road, after it had piled up rent arrears and repeatedly ratted on its promise to clear them—a deeply mortifying episode for a party projected by its Chairman as formidable. It doesn’t help matters that its equally financially struggling (but humbler) rival, FDC can afford its rent.

In fact the threat on the Headquarters was emblematic of a broader crisis, with nearly all of NRM’s district offices reportedly abandoned by broke officials or evicted for failure to pay rent. Several party officials who spoke anonymously in that story voiced intense frustration that Mr Museveni was personally influencing the activities, direction and policy of the party from his base at State House, circumventing all the party executives and organs.

It is these perpetual financial woes, unilateral decision making by the party chairman and unremitting internal turmoil that makes the NRM increasingly look fated to fade with the exit of President Museveni.

To the ex legislator, Mr Agrey Awori the NRM edifice is evidently tenuous, but it still “could survive the political demise of Mr Museveni depending on whether he grooms strong personalities.”

If that were to be the case though, Mr Museveni would have to radically shift his style of leadership and management of the party affairs so that institutional structures are allowed to function unhindered and charismatic party members offered an opportunity to shine. However, apparently there’s no sign Museveni is changing his style of governing the party and, instead, all telltales point to a hardening of his strong-man leadership approach and a weakening of NRM’s formal organs.

Mr Awori for example bemoaned the virtual isolation of the party vice chairman, Mr Al Haji Moses Kigongo and portrayed it as signalling a troubling trend.

A recent NRM convert, Mr Awori, too, said the escalating factionalism and nasty ego clashes amongst the party stalwarts was “unhealthy” and that “mafia allegations” could deal the party a deadly blow in the event of change of government. Another source within the NRM, suggested there was effectively no one running the party now since, “Museveni is busy with the presidency, Mbabazi (Party Secretary General) with political intelligence and Kigongo marginalised.”

A few party members are placing hope in half a dozen or so young NRM leaders who have recently shown a measure of circumspection and broad appeal to inspire genuine change in the party.

In December 2006, four zealous young NRM MPs: Frank Tumwebaze, Margaret Muhanga, David Bahati and Mr. Chris Baryomunsi, co-authored a paper that assailed Mr Museveni for failing to acknowledge the factors eroding his support, culminating in his all-time low 59% vote in the February 2006 presidential elections.

It was the first time NRM members without any influence or power, had directly criticised Mr Museveni who had hitherto enjoyed a de facto sacred cow status in the party. While immediately not of any profound significance, that incident was noted by analysts as capable of inspiring future determination on the part of other members who may feel dissatisfied by Mr Museveni’s uncompromising leadership to directly engage him.

In an interview, Mr. Baryomunsi stated that the NRM was currently “struggling very hard” to decouple the NRM from its chairman, Mr Museveni and also accepted it as imperative for the party to outgrow the culture of “historicals.” Still, for all the mounting crises undermining the NRM’s integrity, Baryomunsi believes it can float on in a Post-Museveni Uganda. The key, he asserted, will be “how we exercise internal democracy and elect leaders.”

THE history of political parties and their fortunes after their leaders have left power in Uganda appears to particularly bode ill for the NRM. By any comparison, the NRM has arguably not reached even half the might, mass appeal and financial capacity of two of the historical parties: Obote-founded Uganda Peoples Congress and the Democratic Party, DP at the peak of their power. And yet, over the last 20 years those parties have helplessly declined to sad relics of their past selves.

With its administrative structures particularly at the district and lower levels tenuous or non-existent, perpetually empty coffers, continuous wrangling in senior party ranks and rising dispassion in the party’s rank and file, an intransigent party chairman: the NRM organisation might as well write its epilogue soonest after Museveni’s end.

Common Denominator in Mr. Museveni’s Industrialisation Rhetoric.

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA



KAMPALA--President Museveni and a shrinking brigade of his die-hard loyalists within the NRM routinely harp about industrialising Uganda—something so basic a primary pupil would discuss it with an effort no more than he needs to lick candy—as though the subject were esoteric.

In fact, Museveni pursues his industrialisation crusades with such fervour it’s as if he invented the concept, fooling many into believing that he has an honest interest into expanding Uganda’s manufacturing capacity and thrusting the country into a modern age.

And yet Museveni and his NRM’s rants about building Uganda’s industrial capacity are mere gimmickry contrived to con Ugandans into swallowing assertions that the administration is spending our taxpayer money to transform the country when actually they are busying themselves with primitive accumulation evident in the mounting corruption epidemic.

One stark example— the infamous Tri-Star Apparels firm—bares the deception of Mr Museveni and his NRM’s proclamations on industrialisation and the immense harm they have done to this country under a clever guise of transforming it.

If there was any generous chance for this administration to demonstrate its commitment to uplifting this country, it was the African Growth and Opportunity Act, Agoa, the law enacted by the US Congress in early 2000 to let impoverished African nations like Uganda export, unencumbered by quotas and tariffs, cheap goods to the US market.

There are dozens of goods eligible for export under Agoa, but there’s only one area where Uganda had a breathtaking advantage—organic cotton production—and the country, if well led, should have become a mass producer of nice garments for both the US domestic markets. But a sadistic government, the NRM, would not let us be what we wanna be (to borrow a phrase from the American rapper, Nas’ song: I Can) and instead seized what was a profound, historic opportunity and turned it into what FDC’s Dr. Col. (rdt) Kizza Besigye famously described as a “costly fiasco.”

Before we could brink, instead of the thousands of jobs and millions of precious dollars in export earnings we had been promised by Mr Museveni while haranguing us to embrace Agoa: Shs 24 billion of scarce taxes had been made to disappear through a corrupt nexus, whose public face was a Sri Lankan shark, Mr Vellupilai Kananathan but whose masterminds appeared stationed around Nakasero.

These days whenever Mr Museveni is challenged about his reckless destruction of this nation through displacement of public institutions to give the land to his purported investors, he berates us for not appreciating the need for industrialisation and, well, lacking vision.


But the Tri-star Apparel swindle showed the nation what in fact Mr. Museveni has in mind when he speaks of industrialisation—a pipeline to siphon off the nation’s taxes by those that have a “vision.” This is what we should always have in mind whenever Mr Museveni takes to the podium and launches into his lectures on boosting Uganda’s industrial capacity.

And when we grasp this important connection between the numerous industrialisation/modernisation projects (Tri Star, Mabira giveaway, former UTV land, Shimoni land, Kalangala forests for oil palms etc) and the endless loop of loss to the taxpayer, it will become easy for us to comprehend some of the most bizarre acts like the looming despoliation of the source of River Nile.

Uganda’s Founding Father, ex President Dr. Milton Obote once arrived at an accurate characterisation of Mr Museveni (as a violent man) by rooting for a constant factor in all of the wars where Museveni has been involved. He observed that the theatres and times of those wars had been varied as had been the causes and several other aspects. Only two elements remained strikingly constant: Mr Museveni and the atrocities against non-combatants.

That’s a helpful clue to understanding today’s Mr Museveni and his supposed efforts to expand industrial production in Uganda. Over the time he has been pressing this cause: the projects, years, investors involved, sectors etc, have been different. Only two elements that have not varied whatsoever throughout: Mr Museveni and the loop of loss to the taxpayer.

There’s no gainsaying that Uganda needs industries. We need to create formal jobs for the hordes of youth streaming out of universities. We need to expand our technological capacity. these are no small tasks and if there were any Asian, Arab, European, American or any person of any race or from any region willing to come and lend a hand in efforts to realise these achievements, that person deserves maximum goodwill and support from us citizens and our government.


Nevertheless, when Mr Museveni and his NRM start to switch public land from this use to that and lavish incentives to investors: it is time to start worrying by any one who knows those two common denominators in this administration’s industrialisation effort

Global Food Crisis and President Museveni's Populist View

ELIAS BIRYABAREMA


KAMPALA--Just about every body round here and across the globe agrees the escalating food prices are fomenting a new world pandemic, that will unsettle societies and spawn desperation and death.

As it appears, the logic is pretty simple: costly food will increasingly slip out of the reach of millions of poor folks already struggling to survive daily. Mass starvation will consume millions. And as the civil unrest erupting in several countries has demonstrated, the consequences of this spreading hunger can be far reaching.

Only one man is smiling through all this global food melancholy—President Yoweri Museveni.

Always a contrarian, his supposedly unfailing wisdom ahead of everybody’s, Mr Museveni was reported on NTV’s Tonight news programme recently claiming that far from being saddened, he was revelling in the runaway food prices. For once, he said, his peasants, long tormented by bottom earnings from their produce, were going to get rich.

Glibly, his political assistant, Mr Moses Byaruhanga chorused the same assertion. It is hard to understand why Mr Museveni should be making such an embarrassingly populist claim.

True, Uganda produces a number of foods—beef, rice, sugar, corn (maize) etc— whose world supplies are running critically low and it is easy to construct a simplistic argument that the rise in the prices of these foods is good for Uganda.

But that would be farcical.

Although accurate figures are hard to find, Uganda is believed to be a net food importer and any steep upswing in the cost of food will easily deteriorate our trade deficit, and potentially rattle the larger economy. Uganda’s agriculture is nearly all of it subsistence, and there’s little the country’s peasants—barely able to feed themselves even in the best of times, to say nothing of exporting—can benefit from the soaring world food prices.


Yes, a peasant here and there, with extended acreage under cultivation, will rake in a few extra shillings but that’s a blip compared to the deadly hunger that could grip urbanites and the mass starvation awaiting the millions in North and Eastern Uganda that rely on relief food daily if the rocketing prices are not curbed.

In fact, even if these prices go on to engender a crisis in Kampala and other urban centres, a large section of the peasant families, who daily scrimp by on remittances from their richer, urban-dwelling relatives, will get sucked up in the pandemic as those relatives spend all they earn on the costly food. A great deal of the food consumed across Uganda is imported: wheat, corn, rice, cooking oil etc. I can’t seem to see any obvious winners in this food price scourge—it’s all a lose-lose situation.

In fact, more than any other leader, President Museveni should worry: 1.6million of his citizens, trapped in displacement camps in North and North East Uganda, are fed by WFP, mostly on imported food—corn, cooking oil, wheat flour etc. As the prices rise, WFP’s budget will only be able to purchase lesser and lesser food and the rations are already being cut as the body’s donors are unwilling or slow in responding to appeals for more generosity. And even if WFP were purchasing the food from Uganda, the supply scarcities would still spark immense suffering despite a windfall for the middlemen and may be some peasants. Diluted by the price hikes, the WFP’s budget would only cover a fraction of its normal food purchase levels, meaning hunger in the bellies of millions in Uganda whose mouths it caters.

And that’s before we even start to think of the dreadful consequences of starvation in Kampala and other municipalities across the country. Already unable to cope with the ever increasing hordes of poor, sudden starvation would stir nothing short of upheaval, a crisis the NRM can hardly handle. Gloomily, too, the NRM, never a government to plan for contingencies, runs the nation without strategic food reserves and so all it takes is a mere slight jolt to a normal food flow to plunge Uganda into a full-blown catastrophe. The ballooning food supply crisis could offer that jolt.

If Mr Museveni were right and food prices were good for peasant nations, West African countries, which like us have plenty of them, would not be erupting. And yet governments there have had to mass police forces on the streets to quell hunger-stoked explosions of violence.

So how, then, minding all the foregoing could Museveni start celebrating the global food price surge?

It’s a noxious blend of populist politics, mendacity and plain incompetence that have come to define the NRM lately. His predictions of bonanzas for peasants, false and absurd as they are, are easily believed by the NRM’s core constituency—the naïve rural masses. And obviously unprepared to absorb the impact a food crisis, the populist declarations of the supposed bonanza helps Mr Museveni sooth a fretful and agitated populace.