The NRM can grow fat, then obese, then die

Biology has something to teach those who think that when the NRM grows bigger and bigger, it is always making progress.
Somewhere along the way, we evolved a calorie storage system that served us well when we were hunters and fruit gatherers, and when our agriculture was still very primitive.
When food was in plenty, our ancestors ate to their fill, the storage system converting the excess nutrients into fat. During prolonged spells of food shortage, the body turned to this store and converted the fat into useful calories.
In our times, with advanced agricultural techniques like President Museveni’s jerry can-and-bottle irrigation system, as well as food processing plants and the ubiquitous supermarket, food is often available throughout the year, your pocket permitting.
With this abundance, it is easy to accumulate fat until you are obese, simply because you may never have a prolonged hard spell for the body to turn to the reserve.
The dangers are now well known; the remedies are hard and sometimes very costly. So, to the more enlightened, whether the command “eat, eat” comes from a genetic source or an undisciplined life style, or both, fat is increasingly being related to many death sentences.
A few months back, at someone’s residence, I watched two ladies methodically demolishing their mountains of food. Rice, Matooke, potatoes, meat; everything was vanishing at speed, and I was astonished by the efficiency of these two-legged food removal machines.
Not for lack of respect, I thought of pigs.
In the NRM era, pigs have taken their symbolic role seriously, making several public appearances.
However, although it has its great points (as George Orwell demonstrated long ago), the pig has the problem affluent humans have, a tendency to eat and eat whatever is available and grow excessively fat.
About three weeks ago, while marking the NRM Liberation Day in Wakiso District, the party secretary general, Ms Kasule Lumumba, warned district chief administrative officers (CAOs) against being influenced by district chairpersons, if those chairpersons belonged to the Opposition:
“When you notice that you are being influenced, please refuse and report to our offices for technical support.” (See Sunday Monitor, February 12) Presumably, ‘technical support’ is stick rather than carrot.
However, in the same breath, she also bade the CAOs to have “harmony and a good working relationship with them while executing (their) duties”.
The net meaning of Ms Lumumba’s political sermon is that the NRM must enjoy a monopoly of ideas. Significantly, Ms Lumumba’s sweeping order did not distinguish between good and bad ‘influence’. CAOs and other district officials, who in our folly we assumed were ‘neutral’ civil servants (unlike the RDCs), must now in effect become members of the NRM.
The excuse is a crude interpretation of ‘promoting’ or ‘implementing’ the ruling party manifesto.
Therefore, ‘harmony and a good working relationship’ must mean unquestioning obedience by the elected Opposition chairpersons. Otherwise the NRM secretariat would deploy ‘technical support’ to handle any chairperson who may try to exert their (good or bad) influence.
If the NRM generally stood on higher moral ground, that would not be such a disturbing idea.
In the circumstances, if NRM bigwigs hatch a plan to loot billions of Shillings through a district project, the CAO and the elected chairperson must comply.
Not only Lumumba thinks like that. The minister for Luweero Triangle, Mr Denis Galabuzi, was also reported to have pledged to recruit ‘good’ Opposition politicians for the NRM camp.
Higher up, with his governance score card indicating a decline, the NRM chief, President Museveni, has been associated with tempting, cajoling, persuading and ‘buying’ Opposition political leaders; an undignified distortion of multi-party politics.
You can get numbers to cripple the Opposition. And the way the NRM abuses State resources, it can ‘recruit’ any number of ‘good’ Opposition leaders; where ‘good’ generally means the unprincipled, the treacherous, the buyable destitute, the conspicuous ballot box failure; the player who can finally endorse the vampire state and its doctrine of food.
But as the NRM gobbles them up, like our indiscriminate two-legged food removal machines, the party can grow fat, then obese, then die.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator. [email protected].