2021 general elections: Inside Museveni’s plan to reduce campaign period and beat Bobi Wine, Besigye hands down

With only months left to the 2021 general elections, President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) party is determined to retain power and extend the former bush war general’s 35-year rule.

While Ugandans are preoccupied with the current Covid19 crisis, President Museveni and his NRM party are working behind the scenes to ensure that they take advantage of the current situation to make the party’s National Chairman and flag bearer more appealing to the electorate, then push for a reduction in campaign time to place the opposition in a tight corner. From barring political opponents from distributing relief food items to taking a swipe at them during some of his coronavirus speeches, Museveni has won the hearts of most Ugandans.

His latest rebuking of Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga and an announcement that he would take a 50% salary cut to contribute to Covid19 taskforce efforts (both during his 12th Covid19 address at State House Nakasero on April 28) have, no doubt, made him a darling of some people who now look at him as caring and a fighter of corruption. In other words, the NRM flagbearer is already in campaign mood.

But the President doesn’t take chances. That his directives have made it possible for people to stay home and listen to his speeches doesn’t mean his re-election bid is a done deal. It has now emerged that Museveni has endorsed a proposal by Speaker Kadaga, who is also the second national vice chairperson of the NRM, to make changes in the election roadmap.

Kadaga had written to Museveni notifying him of the need to postpone NRM Primaries because of the current Covid19 pandemic. Kadaga had suggested that the elections to choose flagbearers for next year’s parliamentary and presidential elections be postponed to August and September.

In his reply to the letter from Kadaga, Museveni said he had no problem with the suggestion from the country’s number three and head of the legislative arm of government. He also promised to discuss the matter with the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) members on phone.

But while Kadaga’s concern was prompted by the realisation that holding primaries now might be impossible since public gatherings were banned in March yet the party adopted the lining up method for internal elections – where voters will be required to line behind candidates of their choice – Museveni seems to have found a way to use the extension to his advantage. The president says he had for long thought about reducing the time of politicking, suggesting that deferring the primaries up to less than four months to election month was the right answer to the puzzle for whose solution he has been searching.

“I have received your letter of the 23rd of March, 2920 regarding the NRM primaries. I totally agree with the idea. The country should minimise the time spent on electioneering. Therefore August and September 2020 are reasonable,” reads part of Museveni’s reply to Kadaga in a letter dated April 22 and copied to NRM Secretary General Justine Kasule Lumumba and CEC members.

It should be remembered that Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama Mugyenyi recently revealed that the electoral body would not extend the 2021 elections owing to constitutional requirements that elections be held but could make changes in the handling of the polling process. What this means is that the president would succeed in limiting campaign time for his opponents like opposition leader Dr Kizza Besigye and political newbie Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, the Kyadondo East MP who has already expressed interest in the country’s top seat.

Reducing campaigning (electioneering/politicking) time is not good news for the opposition members whose meetings are usually blocked while the president holds events and makes his case before the voters at such ceremonies in his capacity as head of state and NRM Chairman. More revisions in the electoral roadmap are expected after the current lockdown has been fully lifted and the new changes won’t favor the unprepared and disunited opposition which needs more time but Museveni who already has an audience before which he is keen to show that he is in charge of the situation.