For those of us who deal with issues of strategy day in day out, it is clear that there is a very thin line between bravery and recklessness. If Rt. Hon. Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga decides to go for an all out confrontation with the Ssabalwanyi by standing as an independent candidate for the Speakership of the 11th Parliament, it will be seen as an act of bravery through the lens of her diehard supporters (plus Museveni haters).
On the other hand, those among us who have been lifelong students of the Ssabalwanyi, it is something that we shall outrightly class as a reckless or foolhardy move on her part. I will belabour below.
Kadaga has provoked Museveni many times in the past and Museveni has kept his cool waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It did not help matters when she cornered Museveni into answering questions from her backyard as to whether he has a good working relationship with their daughter during the Presidential campaigns in December 2020. Museveni fumbled in his defence, but his anger was visibly evident. In delivering this humiliation to the Ssabalwanyi, she forgot that Museveni DOES NOT FORGIVE NOR FORGET (and is a Machiavellian)! It is now his time to finish off the lady from Mbulamuti decisively.
Kadaga needs to understand that losing the party endorsement in a rigged primary of an election that will eventually be decided through adult suffrage involving the average voter IS NOT THE SAME thing as losing the party endorsement in a rigged ‘primary’ of an election that will eventually be decided through an electoral college of sorts (read Parliament).
If your party is one fused with the State (and the NRM is), the party will always have its way at the vote in the electoral college. Voters in the electoral college are few, can be easily manipulated and cowed into submission to even vote against their individual choices.
Any body that has participated in those electoral college votes of the special interest groups will by now be knowing how the NRM and the Ssabalwanyi get their way and impose unpopular candidates on the voters.
Having chaired CEC that grilled and threw out Kadaga, Museveni knows that Kadaga is now a wounded cobra. You either crash her and defeat her decisively or brace yourself for the hostility and fury of a wounded woman (or is it lioness?). Museveni is naturally a coward with a very incisive survival instinct. He will not let a defiant Kadaga live to see another political sunrise!!
I believe that if tonight Kadaga can find her way to her political seer on Nhenda hills (that place where she went to give thanks for her win in 2016), the seer’s crystal ball will show the same things as mine.
If she still wants to have a political career and get a chance to get back at Museveni, she had better look out for me and we haver tea together at Century hotel in Kamuli as I take her through the plan I shared here yesterday.
One big lesson I learnt from working closely with the Raila Odinga team in the past is to advise politicians to never blindly allow to be blackmailed by the sentiment of their support base. A politician needs to curve his or her way out of tricky scenarios and then explain to the supporters later.
And lastly, I want to tell Kadaga that political parties in banana republics like ours are NOT religious institutions that are heavily rooted in dogma. In these parts of the world, political parties are mere clothes worn by a politician for different phases of their political journey. It is high time, she resigned her seat and sought to regain it on NUP ticket. That will be the moment, she will expose the political underbelly of Museveni and allow Ugandans to retrace the anger of the rigged January 14 elections that Museveni has been trying to sweep under the carpet.
I rest my case and hope Kadaga will read this before the election of speaker tomorrow.
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