Why Museveni may not need to campaign 

Mark you, according to the Electoral Commission spokesperson Paul Bukenya, all one needs is about 9,800 signatures from two-thirds of the 146 districts in the country. Those signing should be registered voters, with National Identity Cards and telephone contacts. 

Before one appreciates the import of the over-kill, we may pause and observe that however far-reaching NRM is on the so-called ground, there is a serious cost implication to such a mass collection of data. 

In Uganda, to get five million people with all the three criteria matching perfectly, for example,  registered voter with National ID details, and registered phone number, one may need to approach a minimum of six million people, which they claim they did in a week.

Most of these people, especially in rural areas, do not carry their National IDs all the time. Some have phone numbers that are not registered in their names. One may need to go from house to house to verify these details.

This means that the NRM party may have to spend at least Shs1,000 in transport and facilitation accessing each of the signatories, which for six million people translates into a minimum of about Shs6b. 

Okay, NRM is huge, we are told, and it is a State party for all intents and purposes. The members do not fund the party instead the party funds and facilitates them.

 For a party, like all others, which has challenges paying overheads like salaries to run its operations, from where do they get such money in these hard times of Covid-19 budget cuts? 
 
It also means that NRM has already secured an updated voter’s register to cross-check the veracity of these signatures. This is okay only to the extent that many other political players complain of failure to access the same. 

According to Joel Ssenyonyi, the spokesperson of the National Unity Platform (NUP) ,“there is still a lot of secrecy surrounding the Voter’s Register.” If they don’t have it, how sure are they that all the five million signatories are registered voters?

That aside, the NRM party borrows a lot from its guerrilla background in as far as the significance of numbers is concerned. 

In all  contests, the party that sets and controls the information on numbers, gains a lot of ground in terms of propaganda. 

To start with, to this day, it is not clear if only 27 men went to the bush and overthrew a government army of thousands or was it hundreds of men who went with only 27 guns.

 Either way, it became accepted that the NRA had managed to multiply both men and arms gradually from a point of immense scarcity and disadvantage, due to their superior ingenuity, tenacity and valour. 

In the 80s when the armed wing NRA was in the bush, we used to listen to BBC when it was the only credible source of information about the war. 

 Correspondent Henry Gombya reporting on the progress of the war on the flagship Focus on Africa show hosted by the late Chris Bikerton and Robin White always indicated that NRA had no deaths or casualties. 

The government forces; UNLF, always lost hundreds of men and arms in the battles. It went on in the wars against the LRA in northern Uganda. In fact there, journalists who reported NRA loses were accused of demoralising the patriotic soldiers while aiding and abetting rebellion.

So the report on the collection of these signatures is a quick move to capture and control the flow of information as we head into the election. It is a form of opinion poll.

 If you look back at the election of 2016, the result announced by the EC had 5,971,872 votes for Museveni’s NRM while FDC’s Kizza Besigye had 3,508,687 votes. 

Now Museveni ‘already has’ five million votes before the campaigns or the polls open. In the last two elections, it is worth noting that Museveni managed to get almost the exact percentage of votes that opinion polls prominently reported in the local media, predicted.  

How then will anyone dispute him or his team when they ‘get’ five million votes plus another three million votes in the election proper considering that not all the members of the mass party endorsed him? Better that the promises that come in the campaign may convince a lot more people either on the fence or in the Opposition to see the light. 

Looked at in another way, now that Museveni is not as young as he was five  years ago, and with the Covid-19 pandemic, he may not have the same leeway to physically campaign in all corners of the country.

 In fact he does not have to do so. The Electoral Commission (after consultations and approval from Museveni) has guided that there will be ‘scientific’ campaigning and elections only. 

Already five million votes are presumably in the bag. The signed forms delivered in cartons to the EC are proof.

A few text messages to voters, bill boards, radio and television interviews, songs, adverts and leaflets and the NRM flag bearer is home and dry.

Twitter: @nsengoba