Go damn it! Next time at least warn me. The water returned through my nose even. Holly Crap!!! Where is Pinochio by the way? Seen him, how long is his nose now? --------------------------- There is so much anxiety preceding this national delegates’ conference. Will this meeting mark a turning point in the NRM? It is not a turning point per se. That anxiety is always expected because of our party’s mass membership. For whatever national activity we engage in, as a party, each and every member of NRM in every village of all the 57,000 villages countrywide will remain anxious waiting to know the outcome. And we are proud of that confidence the citizens have put in our party. The decisions we shall make in Namboole will mainly be to facilitate our party’s institutional capacity in readiness for group competitive politics in 2016 and beyond. A lot of discussion in the build-up has been about the proposal to scrap an elected secretary general position and have one appointed by the chairman. What motivates this? It was a big mistake in our party constitution to fuse the roles of an administrator together with the roles of an elected political leader. You can’t be a decision maker in an organisation, and at the same time be an administrator and implementer of the same decisions. Conflict of interest becomes glaring and inevitable. The secretary general is the head of staff and administration at the national secretariat and that clearly presupposes that he/she is a full time technical employee. For example, when you read articles 16 and 18 of the NRM party constitution that provide for the positions of secretary general at the national level and administrative secretary at the district level respectively, you will clearly see that their functions are the same and purely administrative. And yet again one sees the unexplainable difference as to why the secretary general is not appointed as it is for administrative secretary at the district. The functions of the administrative secretary at the district level are largely the same to those of the secretary general at the national level. For example, in article 16 (7) g, the secretary general, (with the secretariat he/she leads), is mandated to; provide administrative and secretarial services to the national conference and National Executive Council. The administrative secretary is also mandated in article 18(5) e to: provide administrative and secretarial services to the district conference. How can an elected leader be the one to offer administrative and secretarial services? Another example is in article 16 (7) (i); the secretary general is mandated to; maintain the national register of members while in article 18(5) (f): administrative secretary is also mandated to; keep and maintain a register of all members within the district. A party register is a major electoral tool necessary for smooth internal elections of the party. The big question then is how a secretary general who is also elected and therefore a direct beneficiary of that party members register, that he/she maintains, can be able to be an impartial umpire (neutral person) in this case and maintain a register of electoral integrity? He/she is already conflicted with personal interest from the outset. This is one of the major anomalies to rectify! Is this legislation targeted at a single individual—in this case Amama Mbabazi? From the elaborate and logical explanation I have given you above you can see the justification of the proposed amendment. It has nothing to do with an individual. Have you, the seconders of this idea, thought about the party’s unity? Shall we not see a fractured NRM after this Namboole conference? NRM’s unity has been sustained for this long because of its correct ideological positions and because of our founding leader’s insistence on the telling the people the truth and not necessarily what is popular, a temptation I see many of our leaders falling for these days. That is why even those who scheme selfishly with the intention to cause the fracturing you are alluding to get badly defeated at the end, while others choose to return to the fold. What mechanisms are in place to deal with a possible fall-out after this conference? It depends on what the fall-out you talk about is premised on. Politics is not about sentiment. It’s about genuine issues that represent the interests of the majority. It’s always not hard to easily discern the person on the correct line and the one scheming for selfish political advantage. But the latter cannot whatsoever sustain such a selfish agenda. NRM supporters know better how to choose their best at any given time. For example, many of you people in the media have for all this time been negatively portraying NRM and its leader. But despite that persistent and deliberate anti-NRM editorial policy pursued by some good number of media outlets, NRM’s support and that of its leader has never dwindled. People eventually get to know the truth. And that is why we (NRM) never get bothered by the continuous bad press that we continue to suffer unfairly. You have made Resident District Commissioners a key component of this exercise. As the political head of RDCs, was this your idea—to use them to verify members to attend the conference? There is nothing unusual or illegal that the RDCs are engaged in and it’s the usual propaganda always cooked and spiced to make NRM and government look bad. An RDC is mandated by the Constitution to be the head of the security committee at the district. Police and intelligence are under the coordination of the RDC’s office. The security committee supports anybody or group on security matters irrespective of any political side they are on? When FDC or DP is conducting its meeting, security agencies don’t just look on. They give any possible security-related support, whether solicited or unsolicited. So, security agencies will not be watching idle as NRM convenes a gathering of more than 10,000 people. It’s their constitutional mandate to plan for security arrangements, including drawing security vetting and accreditation plans. That is not being partisan in anyway and whether it’s an NRM or FDC meeting, security agencies will be present and will have to make broad contingency operational plans. As we gather at Namboole our security is not the responsibility of NRM party secretariat. It’s a responsibility of the State’s security apparatus. And RDCs are part of this security apparatus. Any political group can make use of it. What do you make of critics like Ms Hope Mwesigye who say using RDCs weakens the party since it had its officials who could have done what the RDCs are doing? She could be misled to believe wrong information and as a former minister of government she knows clearly the role of the office of the RDC in as far as coordination of security work at the district is concerned. There is nowhere RDCs are doing work of party officials. The other misrepresentation I have also quite often seen in the media and which I would like to explain is the notion that RDCs are not supposed to advocate publicly for government programmes as contained in the NRM manifesto. That is wrong, because the Constitution in Article 203 mandates the RDCs to be the representative of central government in a district and to do all the monitoring and supervision of all service delivery programmes. How can he/she do all this without advocating for government positions? And implementing the NRM manifesto is also not a partisan activity because the NRM manifesto is the policy document that the entire government is implementing after it has been elected. All the programmes of government that we vote money for in Parliament every Budget year are those defined by the NRM manifesto. Any manifesto of a ruling party ceases to be a partisan affair when it’s elected by the citizenry. This is an issue to understand in case anyone didn’t know. Some political watchers say NRM is metamorphosing and that what you see now is a gradual shift of power from the old guard to the young turks like you. Fair comment? Of course that is expected and it’s an indicator of the party’s ability to grow and produce young leaders in its ranks as it builds on the strong foundation built by its founding leaders. And this now defeats the allegation that there is no internal democracy in NRM. How then would these new leaders be emerging? There are allegations that you are locking out some delegates known to be close to Mr Mbabazi. Are you so scared of Mr Mbabazi that you cannot even let his supporters into Namboole? Well, Mbabazi or non-Mbabazi supporters are not labelled or marked. That is a total lie and as the organising committee we are trying to avoid the mistakes of the previous conferences, where non-delegates (mere party enthusiasts) would be allowed to enter. The delegates to be accredited to Namboole are not anybody else, but those categories defined in the party constitution. The lists of these categories have been widely published in the media by the acting secretary general so as to give clarity to all. We have also received reliable information that there are people mobilising and misinforming non-delegates to come and overwhelm us at Namboole such that we can allow them in and thereafter give them an opportunity to challenge the outcome of the conference legally on the pretext that non-delegates were used to make decisions they were not empowered to make. All this are well known to us so we shall take no chances. You have personally been involved in the sole candidate drive. Why are you killing internal party democracy by ring-fencing positions? That is not ring-fencing and whoever wants to stand and is qualified will stand. Ours is an expression of support and confidence in the leadership of President Museveni whom we believe is our best choice for now to beat off other rivals. It’s our right to express ourselves on whom we believe in, nobody will intimidate us. Secondly, when you people talk of internal democracy and only refer to NRM then I wonder. It’s as if you don’t live in Uganda. Which other political party organises the most stiffly competed for and highly participatory internal elections as NRM does? All the other parties just handpick flag bearers, leave alone talking about conducting grassroots elections of party branch leaders. So, please analyse our politics correctly. monitor.co.ug/Magazines/PeoplePower/Tumwebaze--RDCs-not-doing-work-of-NRM-party-officials/-/689844/2547330/-/5i8o0dz/-/index.html
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 23:19:15 +0000