MUSEVENI IS LOSING LEGITIMACY WITHIN THE NRM PARTY NRM MEMBERS CALL FOR REFORM FROM WITHIN DUE TO M7’S LUST FOR POWER AND UNLIMITED SELFISH INTEREST FOR PRESIDENCY. M7 HAS KIILED NRM STRUCTURES In fact, NRM’s internal organization has become thin. And despite the return of multiparty competition, the NRM’s institutions have remained weak since Museveni began using cabinet positions and other state offices (not party posts) as key instruments for projecting his influence and maintaining support. Between 1986 and 1996, the NRM was highly organized and functionally intact. As Museveni’s personal ambitions became a contested issue within the party, however, splits grew. Before becoming a public opponent of the president in 2001, Besigye was the leader of a group of NRM dissidents who called for reform from within. In 2005, Museveni fired three major cabinet members—one of them an old and close associate— who had become known for privately opposing the president’s unchecked power, his manipulation of Parliament to lift term limits, and his rumored ultimate goal, the grooming of his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba for the presidency. The cabinet dismissals were a sign that Museveni was losing legitimacy within the NRM. Perhaps not coincidentally, his reliance on the official structures of the state was growing fast. The Office of the President and State House (the official presidential residence) became the primary engines of government. Funding for them outstripped spending on agriculture and competed with monies expended on defense, education, and health. During the ban on multipartism, the distinction between the NRM and the state seemed to matter little. Once multipartism returned, however, the NRM reemerged as the regime’s key vehicle for claiming and projecting democratic legitimacy. Efforts to put the party in order began in 2005 and gathered more intensity after Museveni’s 2006 reelection (his narrowest). Yet the years of unbridled personal ambition and exiting colleagues had taken their toll. Museveni’s scheme to end term limits destroyed any pretense that the political enterprise was about anything but him. M7’s continued tenure does not come cheap, The Parliament that he expanded requires constant feeding, and the cost of moving the democratic goal posts has been rising. In 2005, lifting term limits cost 5 million Ugandan shillings for each MP. Five years later, inducing MPs to support the president took 20 million each MP, and that is not even counting informal expenditures. Members of Parliament are now finding themselves forced to spend much more on their own reelections, meaning that the bill for the regime’s efforts to keep itself in office has gone sharply up. Uganda is not yet a case of transition to democracy. Yet rising contention within the NRM ruling party may pave the way for liberalizing measures, particularly if the current elite and Youth come to feel a high cost from applications of outright repression such as the police violence of April 2011.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Nov 2014 04:39:25 +0000
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