BRIAN K TINDYEBWA: How Tanga Odoi’s Primaries Show Clear Contrast Between NRM & NUP

In a country where the so-called leading opposition party can’t even organize a credible delegates conference, NRM deserves commendation for organizing countrywide elections. Today (Thursday 17th July), the whole country is talking and our vibrant media having a field day as close to 3,000 leaders compete to become NRM flag bearers for the 353 direct constituency MP Seats and another 146 slots for Women MPs.

There are imperfections here and there but that can’t mask the clear good intentions the party top leadership has demonstrated towards being transparent, democratic and inclusive. It’s a huge logistical operation but the NRM is determined to go into such a complex and potentially very divisive exercise. Thank you National Chairman YK Museveni for being aware that even when democracy is expensive, there are no options to it.

Thank you NRM for allowing ordinary party members to have a voice and direct participation in who takes up which leadership position. That is how it’s supposed to be-there is no other way. Thank you Dr. Tanga Odoi for standing up to the mighty and for fearlessly calling out wrongdoers trying to orchestrate mischief in NRM party primaries.

I have heard and seen you on public media calling out such people and making it clear that no one will be tolerated messing up party elections. We thank the National Chairman and our CEC leaders for having identified and appropriately deployed you in that EC role. Indeed, our national chairman is God-given and well possessed with that wisdom which comes with age and experience. He, clearly, isn’t a gambler but a seasoned leader who knows what ought to be done and going on to have guts to have it done.

The competition that the NRM internal electoral process has enabled is the best thing that can ever happen to any political organization that desires growth and organic evolution of best ideas. For all these months as the more than 2,000 leaders competed, ideas contended. That’s how the best ideas emerge and thereby enabling the party to evolve and become better. Gagging internal competition, the way it happens in other parties, under the guise of promoting consensus-building before anything is even tried out, creates more problems than it solves.

As the more than 2,000 leaders compete, the top leadership is able to see and identify leaders who are gifted in mobilization, public speaking and community organization etc. Thank you our national chairman Gen YK Museveni for allowing this free competition to prevail without forcing out anyone.

No position has been ring-fenced in NRM for anyone which is why many of the big people have also had to sweat for the vote to carry the party flag. Nobody can claim to have been forced out by State House in favor of anyone.

And by allowing this free competition and contestation of ideas, the national chairman is able to identify the different cadres or leaders and their respective capabilities-and in the process getting to identify people to deploy in different capacities during and after the 2026 general elections campaigns. I have always been proud of my party the NRM, yet this ongoing primary elections process has given me reason to become even more proud.

We are going into the weekend when NRM is the talking point on all public media and in other fora-all this is courtesy of the mass elections taking place this Thursday. As the debate rages, a lot of publicity is created for the mighty party. Some of it might be negative but publicity is publicity.

There will be challenges and many ugly scenes relating to today’s polling but elections or even politics by its very nature is nothing but contradictions. It’s all you deal with in politics every day. In fact, managing contradictions is the core role for which Dr. Tanga Odoi was hired in his capacity as the NRM Electoral Commission Chairman. We thank God that the former Makerere Professor is managing it well so far.

Willingness to plunge into an exercise that we know will be this complicated and will create so much chaos is what makes the National Resistance Movement. No one does things this massively and remains formidable like we do. It’s only us who can. No one else can dare imitate us on this.

All that the best leaders of the so-called second largest political party in Uganda can do is to go bragging ‘we can’t open our leadership positions to competition because we shall be infiltrated.’ And their supporters, the so-called foot soldiers, let them get away with it. How deceptive? What will stop such a party, once in government, from banning national elections under the guise of shielding the country against (imaginary) meddling for by foreign governments?

Their own ally un the broader opposition Gen Mugisha Muntu always says you can’t give what you don’t have. And to go by this Muntu reasoning and logic, it becomes clear that there is no way the National Unity Platform can promise or ever be relied upon to give democracy to Uganda when they actually don’t have nor practice internal democracy (of allowing clear competitive elections) inside their party.

Their flag bearers are not selected through a competitively transparent processes like NRM does. And as we saw with their so-called delegates conference, to which no observer nor journalist was invited or permitted, even their national leaders for the so-called NEC are not elected through any democratic, transparent or competitive processes.

Then as of February next year 2026, you will see and hear them crying foul of how NRM has rigged the national elections and how their victory has been rigged. Without those NUP leaders realizing, the mighty NRM is already using Dr. Tanga’s elections as a rehearsals’ phase to prepare for general elections of Justice Simon Byabakama.

Instead of doing the same and learning how to manage contradictions on good time, they choose to front appointed as opposed to properly grass root-elected flag bearers. This is why they are always prepared for only one thing which is scapegoating the mighty NRM and its legendary leader Gen YK Museveni whose only crime is that he has consistently kept setting standards for his opponents since 1986.

In fact, the NRM national chairman has always been a standard bearer for his peers since his days as a student liberation struggle leader in the 1960s-1970s. The best NUP and their ilk can do is to imitate him and what he does but they he is simply unequalled. The author Brian Kusingura Tindyebwa is a High Court Advocate based in Kampala and also a grassroots leader inside the mighty NRM party.