Opinion: Sacking Lumumba will not solve NRM's political impasse
A section NRM mobilisers claiming to be youth leaders in the central region under leadership of one Sserubiri Frank have threatened to leave the party if the current NRM Secretary General Justine Kasule Lumumba is not sacked.
First I would like to make these senior "youth" aware of how the variations in the voting patterns have been since 2006. In that year H.E YK Museveni got 59%, 68.3% in 2011, 60.6% in 2016 and 58.6% in 2021. From these statistics it's clear that over the years, the results have always varied. I don't think all these variations are blamed on the current NRM Secretary General or her team.
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As members of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), what brings us together is the like-mindedness and zeal to win elections with a major aim of controlling government. The leaders at NRM Secretariat have led in this mission and in their second general election as leaders the party still controls vast majority of parliament. This is already good enough for us a party. It's only in 2011 that the NRM controlled over 70%, in the rest of the years it has been 60+% as it is even in the 11th parliament.
President Museveni won in 117 districts which is 80% of the total number of districts in the country. The loss in the central region cannot be blamed on the NRM Secretary General. Sserubiri, who claims to be the NRM youth coordinator in the region, should come out and tell the public what he did to help the President/NRM gain popularity in the region. Our loss in Buganda is actually solely blamed on the selfishness and lack of party ideology of some of these relatively young guys in the region.
The party has an internal mechanism of digesting election outcomes and lasting solutions reached.
NRM like any other political party has a free entry and exit policy although our aim is not to loose any of party members but there is liberty to exit. The issues of party administration should solely be left to those that are responsible for the same. Youth should desist from using blackmail and intimidation as means of threatening or extorting bribes from leaders.
The current leadership at the NRM secretariat has performed relatively well in one of the most heated elections in our history as a country. Credit should always be given where it's due.
Sacking the NRM secretary general will not make any difference. The solution is continued empowerment of the secretariat so it can be actively involved with its members throughout the 5 year term. The habit of making the team at secretariat redundant after election has been one of the major reasons for the decline in performance over time.
