It is now very predictable that primary elections for Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) end in chaos and confusion, fights and fallouts. Worse, the elections are largely characterised by violence and brutality, happening both during campaigns and, especially on polling day.
The NRM’s decision to return to an utterly archaic practice of voting by lining behind candidates, their agents or whatever symbol or object used to represent the candidate, has only compounded the stakes.
Intended to save costs, at least in theory, but also considered as a transparent manner of voting where rigging through ballot stuffing is supposedly impossible, the system of lining up is far more problematic than it is appropriate in facilitating democratic practice. Contrary to what it was billed to deliver, the lining-up system reportedly had widespread rigging, bribery, and altering results.
This happened in different places across the country. In my home constituency of Bubulo West, one successful contestant, who apparently came into the race as a total novice, unknown to voters, and has no experience in leadership, nevertheless, had the financial muscle to literally pay for the votes that secured him victory!
Generally, the system of voting by lining is fundamentally anti-democratic. It opens up voters, especially the poor and vulnerable, to undue intimidation, revenge, and retribution. After last week’s chaotic elections to choose NRM candidates for parliamentary general elections, early this week, the party received more than 100 petitions challenging the results. That is nearly a quarter of the constituencies whose results are disputed. This alone is enough evidence of the deeply flawed and fraudulent nature of the system.
As I wrote last week, elections in Uganda, as convened and superintended by our current rulers, are now a mere mockery of the value of democracy.
For starters, the ruling party is not an institution that serves a democratic purpose; rather, it is a vehicle for political opportunism, a path to attaining a job not to serve the public interest but to pursue personal aggrandisement. This, of course, is as well true of Opposition political parties in Uganda, but to varying degrees, to be sure. It is not Opposition parties that are comprised of angels; the perverse incentives for wrongdoing are system-wide, afflicting the ruling party as much as Opposition parties. But the emphasis here is on the ruling party precisely because its leaders are in charge of State power, and the scrambling for a seat in the NRM behemoth has no parallels.
In addition, what the party in power does has far-reaching implications for what happens across the political spectrum.
Supporters of Mr Charles Kabule Sande and Mr Shaban Okumu face off inside Kakira Police Station before officers intervened to defuse tensions on July 16, 2025. PHOTO/ISAAC KINTU.
If there is brazen rigging in the NRM’s party primaries, we are sure to have that very evil behaviour play out on an even larger scale in the general election because the ruling party is the biggest player. It sets the pace and dictates the terms of engagement. If State violence is unleashed, it is always against the Opposition and to the benefit of the ruling party.
As the party of choice, especially in rural Uganda, perceptive actors seeking to secure a place at the political dining table have to rush to the NRM. Thus, the turf wars and do-or-die fights in NRM primary elections have little to do with deepening democracy through elections, more to do with jostling for positions of power. We need to pause and ponder over this.
If the fights and chaos are as pronounced as we are witnessing in the struggle to enter Parliament or to lead resource-poor district local governments, we have to fear deeply what awaits us when the fight to succeed our ruler at the top unfolds. This could be anytime in the near future. All this is obviously a sad commentary on the rulers, who captured power in 1986 with the lofty promises of a fundamental change in the governance of the country, supposedly away from abuse of power and rule by the gun to power to the people. Rather than fundamental change, it became a fundamental mistake, one that will prove difficult to undo.
The decadence in the ruling system keeps deepening. Abuse of power gets more brazen with the bullet ever more consequential than the ballot. The need to return to the drawing board to rethink Project Uganda has long been beckoning, in fact begging.
There is little appetite for this, though, as political entrepreneurs are fully invested in the quest for power and all its trappings with no time for the onerous task of reflecting deeply on the present and future of the country.
Not in the ruling NRM nor among the majority of Opposition actors do we have serious thought and consideration for reimagining Uganda, resetting the terms of our politics, and renegotiating a new stable and sustainable path for the country. Yet, the prospects of becoming another disastrous case of State collapse, social implosion, and political instability, as we see with many countries in the region, is without question real and not at all far-fetched.
moses.khisa@gmail.com
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