{UAH} Why NRM has failed to grow up despite 28 years in power

Last week, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda and the country’s ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, marked their 28th year in power.

As has been the case with each year they have counted their blessings, festivities were part of the show staged in Mayuge district in the East.

As usual, curious villagers gathered to listen to and stare at the big people, their nice clothes, and their shiny limousines. Chosen heroes and others who have made this or that contribution came from across the country to receive medals.

And as has become customary since 1986, newspapers bombarded readers with stories, many recycled, of wartime heroics and interviews with those who fought or participated in one way or another in the war that propelled Museveni and the NRM to power. Sympathetic commentators showered praise, some of it thoughtful and deserved, on the NRM and its leadership.

Others simply went over the top. A minister who was a minor at the time declared the day the NRM seized power as “the real day of Uganda’s genuine Independence.” And then the critics went on the attack. Even people who in the past served regimes one historian has accused of practicing “Jacobin authoritarianism,” joined in.

They slammed Museveni and his government for, among other things, dictatorship; presiding over runaway corruption; mass poverty despite high and rapid economic growth; voter bribery and manipulation; abysmal service delivery; and general all-round failure.

A disillusioned commentator who cut his professional teeth rubbing shoulders with NRM bigwigs, decried the opulence of “those that preached the value of modesty in public life” in the early days.

As usual, however, something important was missing and has been missing from similar discussions all these years. Attacks on the NRM’s record in power never extend to looking into the NRM’s origins and asking what kind of organisation it is. Perhaps the answer to that question may contain pointers to why it has performed below potential, and why it has turned out the way it has.

Let’s start from the very beginning. At the time Museveni and a handful of comrades went to war, there was no NRM. The Uganda Patriotic Movement through which they had contested the 1980 elections had collapsed.

And during the five years of fighting, what passed for the NRM as a political organisation were disparate groupings of exiles scattered all over the world, united by nothing other than a common belief in idealistic notions of democracy, their determination to overthrow the Obote government, and a felt responsibility to mobilise resources for the purpose.

We have no evidence that they had a unifying ideology, let alone common values that would guide their collective and individual conduct once they seized power and became the government. Yes, they had a 10-point programme.

Its contents were, however, mere declarations of intent, not a statement of values such as honesty or selflessness to which every member would be required to adhere if they wanted to remain members.

So, if Museveni went on “to organise politics around patronage,” as his critics routinely point out, it is likely because there are neither strong values nor coherent ideology around which to rally support from the ethnic and religious elites he needs as allies.

The root of the problem, as I see it, lies in having organised an armed group to seize power before building a strong political organisation through which or with which to exercise and manage it.

At the time he came to power, the only coherent group Museveni had around him was the National Resistance Army. What became the political organisation called NRM was a motley collection of fellow idealists and multitudes of opportunists, jobseekers, and political carpetbaggers who had been co-opted as individuals from political parties and interest groups, some of which had nothing in common with the former insurgents.

This explains why, once in government, they each went on to conduct themselves in line with their own personal instincts and inclinations, not a common enforceable and enforced code of conduct informed by recognised, accepted, and respected party values.

Those motivated to accumulate wealth have gone on to amass it, while the few driven by higher ideals have left the party and politics altogether, or continued to fight an obviously lost cause from within.

And with time, more opportunists and jobseekers have joined, further pushing the party towards becoming a fully fledged vessel for self-enrichment, self-promotion, and self-aggrandisement.

There is also something else. In criticising Museveni and the wider NRM leadership for failing in this or that endeavour, it is worth remembering that in 1986, a large number of them were in their late 20s and early 30s.

They assumed office armed with guns and ideals, but little if any experience of managing a state or large organisations. Operating within a juvenile political organisation, with limited capacity for guidance and control, they were guaranteed to create a mess as they went along.

That anyone would find this surprising is, well, surprising.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com

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*A positive mind is a courageous mind, without doubts and fears, using the experience and wisdom to give the best of him/herself.

 

 We must dare invent the future!
The only way of limiting the usurpation of power by
 individuals, the military or otherwise, is to put the people in charge  - Capt. Thomas. Sankara {RIP} ’1949-1987

 *“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent

revolution inevitable”**…  *J.F Kennedy