Can NUP become the new NRM?

The National Unity Platform (NUP) is in the market to scavenge NRM aspirants who lost by a hairsbreadth in the ruling party primaries.
The idea is to cajole them into hoisting the NUP flag as part of the party’s strategy to win a larger portion of parliamentary seats.
Of the current 445 MPs in the 10th Parliament, all Opposition parties combined have a total of 60 MPs (13.5 per cent), 66 are Independent MPs (14.8 per cent), NRM MPs are 310 (69.6 per cent) while 10 are Army MPs.
With the recent creation of 82 new parliamentary seats, the next Parliament will have a total of 527 parliamentary seats. In light of this, NUP’s plan, in and of itself, represents what the Jews call “chutzpah”.  
In Hebrew, chutzpah means “incredible guts”. It’s best demonstrated by the story of the child who kills his parents and then asks the judge for mercy because he’s an orphan!
In Uganda’s unwritten socio-political etiquette, such ambition is frowned upon. The young are always told to wait their turn and not ‘jump the cue’.
So chutzpah is viewed as impatience, which is not considered as virtuous.
All things considered, however, it is exactly such an attitude that will turn NUP into a mass party, like NRM.
In the early 80s, all NRM had was the 10-Point Programme. And it didn’t even specify the institutional frameworks through which it was to be implemented. It was an article of faith, navigating a five-year war. After NRM captured power, it was confronted by the West over its Marxist rhetoric.
President Daniel arap Moi of Kenya, having been the chairperson of the Nairobi Peace Talks, was hostile towards Museveni for not adhering to the peace accord timetable. More, Kampala was partitioned into war zones supposedly controlled by an alphabet soup of forces of UNLA, UNRF, FUNA and UFM.
Again, the NRM administration, like the early UNLF administrations before it, was a coalition of motley forces. Many of them were its enemies until President Museveni gave them jobs.
The task of reconciling these challenges with the NRM’s survival and growth was placed squarely on the shoulders of young men who were in their 20s and early 30s. Men like Salim Saleh, Kizza Besigye, and Serwanga Lwanga to name but three. Even President Museveni was four years older than Bobi Wine is now.
President Obote viewed Museveni and his band of rebels as upstarts, displaying a lot of chutzpah.
If NUP is to parlay such chutzpah into a mass party, as NRM did, it has to go beyond merely recruiting NRM’s rejects. It must form solid institutional frameworks and a committee system to provide channels for pluralist articulation for these NRM deserters.
The NRM not being ideologically cohesive presupposes that potential recruits from it represent diverse socio-political forces advancing particularistic interests.
These forces must be assured of political participation in the organs of NUP so that that none of them feel marginalised.
However, NUP’s central excusive organs must be careful not to become a coalition of competing interests. Hence, these organs may have to be subdivided into deliberative and decision-making sub-organs.
In the former, the new recruits can be heard and their views represented. While the latter must be reserved for the NUP faithful. This should be a cohesive unit manned by those who have spent a relatively long incubation period with NUP. And have, therefore, acquired a shared view on a number of political issues.
This will ensure ideological clarity in NUP’s politico-administrative structures. Which will serve as a galvanising force to ensure that Ugandans get in line behind these “young Turks” who have “jumped the cue”.

Mr Matogo is the managing editor Fasihi Magazine.
[email protected]