Kadaga could have made history over age limit but she blinked, then blanked

Like former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi before her, former Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga mistook position for power and forgot that the NRM is the personal province and domain of its chairman within which no dissent or principled disagreement will be tolerated.

The NRM has had at least three major disagreements over the past three decades: the ‘this isn’t what we fought for’ in the mid-to-late 1990s, and the fight over constitutional amendments to remove term limits in 2003, and age limits in 2017.

These fights had three distinctive features: first, they weren’t ideological but pragmatic and personal, about private accumulation of wealth by regime apparatchiks generally, and the retention of power by its principal in particular.

Secondly, they weren’t fought through debate and reason but by underhand methods including bribery, violence and other forms of manipulation of key decision-makers.

Third, the absence of space for internal debate and compromise within the party meant that the protagonists seeking reform were inevitably ‘othered’ and forced outside. Thus leading lights in the party, including Eriya Kategaya, Kizza Besigye, Bidandi Ssali, Mugisha Muntu were forced out of the tent when they dissented, in a political reminder that NRM management reserves the right of entry.

Mbabazi and Kadaga attempted a workaround this problem by recruiting and managing cadres loyal to them. The PM littered key government agencies with allies, while the Speaker used the considerable parliamentary budget to reward friends and punish foes.  However, both were guilty of putting the personal before the public, and of trying to have their cake and eating it too. Mbabazi had built enough credibility to strike out pre-emptively yet he froze and suffered the ignominy of being forced to endorse the incumbent at Kyankwanzi even as he believed that it was his turn to lead the party.

Having failed to inherit the NRM and its embedded levers of surface and deep state control, he was pushed out of the tent and forced to attempt an alliance of sorts with the very opposition types he had hounded and stymied.

Would Kadaga have won an internal poll among NRM Members of Parliament? We shall never know. We might also never know why she thought that such a contest would not only be allowed to proceed but also be conducted fairly even after the emperor, sitting high up in the colosseum, had already given his thumbs-down.

 Like Mbabazi trying to surprise Museveni at Namboole during the delegates’ conference, this was at best optimistic – and hope is not a good political strategy.

Many have accused the former Speaker of sealing her fate by openly reminding the incumbent that it was her marshalling of the parliamentary troops that allowed the age limit to be lifted, opening the door to a Museveni life presidency.

This is only half the story. Strategically, if Kadaga really believed she had that much power over Museveni the logical thing would have been not to do his bidding in the first place. The central tenet in guerrilla warfare is to only attack when the enemy is weak and you are considerably stronger.

Marshalling her loyal MPs not to vote for the amendment was the only move on the chess board that could have given Kadaga a fighting chance. If she succeeded, it would have blown the succession race within the NRM wide open and demonstrated her own political nous and power. If she failed she would at least have history and the popular vote, as it were, on her side, ready to be deployed in future contests.

Not only was she not able to do so, getting the amendments passed required marshalling real troops – Special Forces commandos – and deploying them into Parliament to beat MPs into line.

Once Museveni got the age limits lifted and a certificate from the Electoral Commission awarding him another term in office the power swung firmly back into his favour and with it the chance to crush a potential political rival.

 It is possible that Kadaga, like Mbabazi and others before will return to the fold in one way or another, but this time, it will be at Museveni’s terms. The pursuit of power in these parts is ruthless and those who do not learn from history repeat fatal mistakes. Kadaga blinked, then she blanked.

 It is also disappointing that Oulanyah, a solid lawyer and experienced parliamentarian, could not take the crown on his own merit and had to prostrate and genuflect in the palace in order to receive royal assent to the job. This wasn’t democracy; it was a political drama put on in the theatre of the absurd in front of court jesters.

Mr Kalinaki is a journalist and poor man’s freedom fighter.

[email protected]; @Kalinaki