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Parallel campaign structures hurt NRM, FDC

Saturday February 13 2016
gabrielle lynch

Gabrielle Lynch

As Uganda approaches next week’s General Election, the presidential elections are increasingly looking like a two-horse race between President Yoweri Museveni of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). With Amama Mbabazi and the “Go Forward Movement” a distant third.

In contrast to much of the academic literature on African politics, which characterises political parties as weak and as existing as mere vehicles for the ambitions of prominent politicians, political parties in Uganda clearly matter.

The NRM has an established party structure that runs from the national secretariat down to the district and then to the sub-county, parish and village level. These structures are active: District party offices are open across the country, while it is usually relatively easy to find the village NRM chairperson. These structures also lie at the heart of President Museveni’s re-election campaign.

Mr Besigye’s bid has been significantly bolstered by the development of more coherent FDC party structures across the country since 2011 when his campaign was widely criticised as disorganised and uninspirational.

Mr Mbabazi’s “Go Forward” campaign has clearly suffered from the lack of party structures that can reinforce the message spread through his rallies and extensive media coverage. The Democratic Party’s campaign for Mr Mbabazi ‘is in turn undermined by a split in the party whereby many prominent party members — including Mukono municipality’s Betty Nambooze — are openly campaigning for Besigye.

However, while political parties clearly matter, their role is complicated — not only by infights and internal divisions — but by the ways in which official structures are simultaneously bolstered and undermined by parallel campaign structures at the presidential and parliamentary level.

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Across the country, the pro-Museveni efforts of NRM party structures are reinforced by the work of a number of distinct, but often closely intertwined institutions.

First, you have Local Council 1 (LC1) chairmen — the administrator responsible for a village or, in the case of towns or cities, a neighbourhood. There have been no elections for LC1s since 2001 when political parties were still banned.

As a result, all chairmen stem from the Movement days, and most still associate with the NRM and are seeking Museveni’s re-election. For example, when one attends local NRM rallies or candidate “stop-overs” in small trading centres, it is common for both the LC1 chairman and NRM village chairman to say a word. Although it is worth noting how in many villages the LC1 chairman also doubles up as the NRM chairman, and sometimes a clan elder or chief and “crime preventer”.

LC1s also contribute to Museveni’s campaigns in other ways. For example, in efforts to deploy 30 crime preventers (CPs) per village, LC1 chairmen were requested to put forward a list of possible recruits. Officially, these cells comprise a volunteer force under police management who report on and help prevent crime in co-operation with police and local communities.

However, in practice, many allege that CPs have been involved in extortion and other criminal activities, and that they are biased towards the ruling NRM party.

Yet, pro-Museveni campaign efforts do not stop there. In addition — and motivated largely by promises of future funding — various youth and workers groups across the country have come together to form NRM task forces whose main role is to mobilise support for the president. These groups sometimes also have a “security wing” that has been trained by retired security personnel.

However, while these parallel structures strengthen the NRM’s presidential campaign, they often weaken the campaigns of other NRM candidates. In many areas the loyalty of these parallel structures to lower-level NRM flag bearers is questionable with many party chairmen, LC1s and so forth openly supporting NRM-friendly independent candidates.

As has been widely reported, there are a large number of independent candidates standing for parliament, but also for mayoral and council positions, in this year’s elections. However, most are not independent in any meaningful sense.

Instead, most use party colours — either yellow for NRM, blue for FDC, or green for DP — in their posters and campaign material, and openly support the presidential candidate for the same. Many are also known party members and only announced their “independence” after losing party primaries.

As former party members, and often as influential local leaders in their own right, many independent candidates enjoy close relationships with upstream and downstream party structures and can rely on elements of the same to support their campaign. In the process, the campaign of the official party flag bearer with whom these independents are contesting is fundamentally undermined as party support becomes divided and local cadres turn in against each other.

As a result, many NRM candidates cannot simply use the official party or parallel structures that are working for Museveni’s re-election, but have to establish their own committees and campaign teams, which adds yet another layer of people who are campaigning for Museveni.

This complex reality also means that NRM flag bearers often cannot campaign together as, in some areas, their support for fellow candidates would undermine their own efforts in contexts where “NRM independents” are more popular. This is evident in Kabarole District, for example, where candidates for parliament, women’s MP, LC5 and mayor are all campaigning separately, and where many members are increasingly frustrated with the level of party division.

The complicated role of parallel campaign structures is also evident when one looks at the FDC. For example, in Mukono district, Besigye’s campaign is clearly strengthened by the fact that locally popular DP candidates are campaigning for him.

At the same time, however, this reality makes it incredibly difficult for FDC candidates to gain ground in the DP heartlands of central Uganda as the Besigye name enables their DP rivals to present themselves as the flag bearers of “the opposition” in a more general sense. In other areas, the FDC — like the NRM — is wracked by divided party loyalties regarding the official FDC parliamentary flag bearer and “FDC independent.”

Such realities strengthen Museveni and Besigye’s presidential campaigns, but they simultaneously render it more difficult for other party candidates.

Gabrielle Lynch is Associate Professor of comparative politics at University of Warwick, UK ([email protected]; @GabrielleLynch6)

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