Last week, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni outfoxed other pretenders to the ruling National Resistance Movement throne.

At a political retreat of the NRM, a group of young MPs moved a surprise resolution to declare Museveni sole candidate for the 2016 election.

In power for 28 years now, the longest ever for any East African ruler, many had hoped he would stand down after 30 years in 2016 and pass the baton to younger and less shaky hands.

Now it seems that unless he makes a dramatic turn toward the road to Damascus, Museveni will take his seventh bite at the cherry in two years.

The manoeuvring seemed trifling considering that his decision to dispatch the Uganda army to South Sudan to help President Salva Kiir keep his job, in what started out as a falling out with his former VP Riek Machar and descended into a full-blooded war, is increasingly coming under criticism.

The Americans and Ethiopians have been wagging their fingers, albeit coyly, at Museveni, requesting that he withdraw his troops from South Sudan to allow a negotiated political settlement to move forward.

These events in South Sudan, however, could explain why Museveni needed an endorsement for the NRM candidacy so early. South Sudan, it seems was Museveni’s equivalent of chest beating by an alpha male gorilla, proclaiming its dominance. He needed to cash in while it lasted.

An analyst told this writer that South Sudan also provided an avenue for Museveni to project strength beyond his borders — in order to disguise his weakness.

“First, I think Museveni has reached a point of disguised weakness,” he wrote in an e-mail.

“He has intervened in so many conflicts that they no longer demonstrate strength; rather, he worries about being considered weak or fearful if he does not intervene in a fight in the neighbourhood… South Sudan is his baby. It is his triumph against Khartoum chauvinism. It is also the only country where he still exercises lordship. Take that away from him and he is half the man he is.”

Kenya and Ethiopia have taken a more savvy position, preferring a multinational military intervention by the regional IGAD, but also investing visibly in a diplomatic solution.

They have come away with more options in future should things somehow change in favour of the Machar faction. But they also remain in business, should Kiir manage to hold on.

Yet Kenya and Ethiopia, whose business communities have a considerably larger stake in South Sudan than Uganda’s, find themselves in a position where if they want to get things done in Juba, it is Museveni more than Kiir who can guarantee it.

Meanwhile, it is instructive though that, in Somalia, where all these countries have contingents with the African Union peacekeeping force Amisom, Al Shabaab militants have increased their attacks in Mogadishu, the sector under Uganda’s control.

Soon Museveni may have to choose to swallow South Sudan and spit out Somalia, or vice versa. Either way, he would return home for the election a little shamefaced. But it wouldn’t matter, would it? He would already have made the party ticket — unchallenged.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s executive editor for Africa & Digital Media. E-mail: [email protected]. Twitter: @cobbo3