{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Mbabazi: what went wrong

http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/42796-mbabazi-what-went-wrong

Mbabazi: what went wrong

Written by Sadab Kitatta Kaaya

Created: 24 February 2016

Amama Mbabazi

Whereas former prime minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi was not expected to win the presidency, his dismal performance was a shocker to his campaign team, writes SADAB KITATTA KAAYA.
Mbabazi launched his presidential bid last September with huge expectations, overriding excitement and a perceived strong financial backing. But the official final tally of 136,519 votes (1.39 per cent) announced yesterday fell far short of his expectations.

At the initial stage after his declaration to stand for the presidency, Mbabazi hired both local and foreign experts to design a winning strategy that would propel him to statehouse.

He quietly forged alliances both within the ruling NRM party and the opposition; and when he eventually launched his bid, he attracted huge crowds in Mbale and Kapchorwa before he was teargased in Soroti and Jinja.

Many saw a vehicle for change in Mbabazi having worked with President Museveni for close to four decades. To stop Mbabazi's march to State House, Museveni applied a carrot and stick method – engaging his longtime ally in talks for a return to the NRM mainstream while unleashing the state machinery against him when talks failed.

When the police blocked his planned consultative meetings in the east, Mbabazi retreated to the drawing board and formalized his membership to The Democratic Alliance (TDA), which was in the process of choosing a joint opposition candidate. He won the endorsement of the majority of the TDA membership after the joint candidate project collapsed.

FDC stood by its presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye as Mbabazi took charge of TDA, riding on the wave of support from the Democratic Party (DP. He renamed the alliance Go Forward-TDA.

From the onset, the alliance seemed to work for him. It organized successful campaign rallies in Masaka, Mukono, Mityana, Arua, Gulu, and Lira municipalities. He also held big rallies in Fort Portal, Kasese, Mbarara, Bushenyi as well as Luweero town council before he changed strategy to focus mainly on rural areas where majority of voters are.
NUMBERS

His strategy of campaigning in the municipalities first was meant principally to market his candidature since he was a first-time presidential contender. Even when he turned to rural and semi-urban areas, Mbabazi continued to attract sizable crowds which he at times used as a basis to dismiss opinion polls that put his support at less than 10 per cent.

The opinion polls gave Mbabazi a better score than what he eventually garnered according to official results. One poll conducted by Research World International (RWI) put Mbabazi at 12 per cent, another by the New Vision had him at six per cent while Ipsos gave him just 1.9 per cent.

The Go Forward-TDA summit is scheduled to meet today (Wednesday) to evaluate the campaign and elections in order to get a proper understanding of what went wrong, according to DP secretary general Mathias Nsubuga Birekeraawo, who also chairs the summit.

"Until we have done an evaluation, I cannot give a national perspective but I am also surprised because, according to the results, he [Mbabazi] got less votes than what [DP president Norbert] Mao got in 2011," Nsubuga told The Observer on Tuesday.

In the 2011 elections, Mao, the current vice chairman of Mbabazi's national campaign team, garnered 147,917 votes (1.86 per cent) while UPC's Olara Otunnu who now chairs Mbabazi's national taskforce polled 125,059 (1.58 per cent). Apart from working up the crowds that attended Mbabazi's rallies, especially in northern Uganda, the two men could not at least give Mbabazi what they got in 2011.

Nsubuga says, this could be blamed on the widespread cases of ballot-stuffing and intimidation of their supporters. Masaka municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga, who was also a member of Mbabazi's campaign team, argues that the results by the EC cannot be used as a basis to measure any candidate's strength.

"I think it is illogical to use the EC figures to measure anybody's strength given the fact that the EC itself doesn't know the actual results each candidate got," Mpuuga said on Tuesday.

To win reelection, Mpuuga polled more than ten times the total number of votes his presidential candidate garnered in Masaka district. Mbabazi's final tally in Masaka district stood at 1,153 compared to Mpuuga's Masaka municipality tally of 17,319 votes.

Generally, the figures show that Mbabazi's campaign team did little to market his candidature, but concentrated at marketing their bids to be part of the 10th parliament given that a good number of the alliance's parliamentary candidates sailed through, and even those that lost, their scores were better than Mbabazi's.

Maggie Lukowe, a communications officer at the Go Forward secretariat, said one needs to make a scrutiny of the happenings during the polling process to understand why Mbabazi's crowds did not translate into votes.

"Move away from the campaign period and look at the polling process itself. A lot of things went wrong; there was last-minute propaganda that he had pulled out of the race, and of course intimidation of our supporters and vote buying," she said.
DEFECTIONS

In a statement issued at the weekend, Mbabazi blamed his poor performance on a skewed playing field. "Illegal actions by the state have been a common feature during the election period as was illustrated by the arrests, assault, disappearance and death of my supporters, the actions of state-sponsored militias like the crime preventers, the intimidation of our mobilisers countrywide and the raiding by police of our offices at Nakasero and my residence in Kololo," he said.

Throughout the campaign period, Mbabazi suffered attacks from NRM functionaries, notably the former director general of the Internal Security Organization (ISO), Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde. In effect, the Go Forward chief lost hundreds of his district coordinators as well as staffers at his campaign headquarters.

Amama Mbabazi with his supporters in Kitgum

Apart from areas where he depended on DP and UPC party structures, Mbabazi's network largely depended on either current or former NRM leaders who easily fell back into the main NRM fold wherever they were approached by state agents.

Mbabazi also suffered internal disgruntlement that saw some of his key staff resign. Although he tried to keep his family off the campaign trail, it remotely controlled the activities at the secretariat. One time, Mbabazi was forced to dash from Bunyoro to Kampala to resolve a standoff between a senior member of his secretariat and a family member.

The standoff, according to insiders, stemmed from a member of Mbabazi's family blocking payment of staff salaries and office rent. Some key staffers resigned after they were allegedly rebuked by Mbabazi's family members. Being privy to Go Forward's inner workings and plans, there are fears that these could have volunteered vital information to the state.

On the trail, Mbabazi's handlers would often retreat into small groups to discuss these and more challenges that faced their boss' campaign. Some, for instance, were bothered by Mbabazi's apparent reluctance to adequately address the issue of the disappearance of his chief bodyguard Christopher Aine.

The Aine question kept coming at Mbabazi's rallies but the presidential candidate always dodged it because he did not want to comment on a matter before the courts.
Mbabazi, through his lawyers, filed for a writ of habeas corpus to compel police chief Gen Kale Kayihura and the government to produce Aine.
FINANCES

While many expected Mbabazi to have a lot of money for the campaign, he had a slim budget on the contrary, and this seemed to demoralize many of his mobilisers.

In building his campaign structure, Mbabazi had hoped that the more than 300 parliamentary candidates under the Go Forward-TDA alliance would be in charge of his campaign at the constituency level.

After waiting for the campaign money in vain, one of the candidates in a Buganda constituency told this writer early in January that he had chosen to switch allegiance to Besigye.

"It is bad to promise people money and you fail to give them anything. I feel I can't continue with him [Mbabazi]. I will now mobilize for Besigye," the Parliamentary contestant said then.

However, Mbabazi downplayed reports of the state freezing a bank account where he kept some of the campaign funds at a Kabale press conference last December but insiders told this writer that more than Shs 50bn meant for the campaign was frozen on an NGO account.

The candidates who stuck by him eventually received some funds at least two days to the polling day purposely to facilitate their polling day agents, among other expenses.
sadabkk@observer.ug

Mbabazi: what went wrong

http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/42796-mbabazi-what-went-wrong

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