We have been here before.
It starts with announcements by fringe members of the ruling
National Resistance Movement (NRM) urging a constitutional change, the
opposition jumps, promising hell and brimstones if the changes are entertained,
then the NRM’s higher organs meet and a momentum is created that sweeps all before
them – heckling opposition leaders included, with a dismissive wave of the
hand.
There is no reason why the latest proposal shouldn’t follow
the same pattern.
When a not widely known MP James Kakooza proposed in 2005 a
removal of the presidential term limits he was dismissed out of hand, within
and outside the NRM. Again when the honourable Raphael Magyezi proposed the
lifting of the presidential age limits in 2018 he was laughed out of town.
"The opposition are right to be worried about the latest
proposal, even more so than the previous two mentioned amendments to the
opposition...
This column has argued incessantly that the opposition
should not be seduced by running for the presidency, but work to build up their
numbers in parliament. NRM and their independent sympathizers have an
overwhelming majority in the house. At last count in the 529 house NRM account
for336 MPs, while short by 18 of the 354 needed for the two-thirds majority, it
would be a bad bet to think they couldn’t get that number when they needed.
A parliamentary vote is all it requires to effect this
constitutional amendment.
But to step back a bit this would be a brilliant plan to
entrench the NRM in power for a while to come. President Yoweri Museveni is in
the evening of his career and the party would struggle to find a candidate with
the national stature of the president to front in the future. The fear is that
like other parties that have dominated their countries in the past, like KANU
in Kenya, UNIP in Zambia, they can flounder badly after their founders move on.
Shifting to parliamentary system would ensure the NRM MPs stay put – no one wants
to be on a losing team and as a byproduct force the parties, all parties, to build
structures.
And that last point would the biggest win for Uganda going
into the future. It takes more organization to run a presidential campaign than
to organize several MPs with a view to boosting your numbers in the house. While
in the short term the NRM would continue to dominate the political landscape,
as the other parties are forced to graduate beyond vehicles of one individual
or the others political ambitions, to become real political machines, we can
expect the competition will improve. Of course the parties that fail to adapt
will be swept aside onto the dustbin of history.
"What we badly need in this country is some real party discipline as a way to further our democratic practice...
Party leaders will now have to earn their keep. They will
have to be more strategic, build up their member bases and see that party
discipline is instilled and enforced. All this has become difficult with every
passing year, they only have themselves to blame.
Almost 20 years ago the question was put to Kizza Besigye,
the then presidential contender, that what would happen if he won the election
and the house was dominated by the NRM, he could only manage that they would
cross that bridge when they got to it. Us the listeners with a wink of the eye
understood him to mean he would buy them all off. That, like hope, is not a
strategy.
And finally this is not an innovation nor unusual. The
parliamentary system has been practiced by many of the western democracies we
look up to. Arguments that the people must elect their president don’t stand up
to scrutiny. If anything experience shows a directly elected president is more
powerful than one that comes through the party, a thing the opposition have
been complaining about for the last three decades or so.
Will the proposal go through or not, only time will tell.
But on the balance of things given the NRM’s parliamentary superiority and need
to perpetuate itself in power after Museveni has left the scene, it seems a
likely outcome.
