#MuherezaWrites
¶Nup having foundations of populism Politics, it has detrimented its power to penetrate into the circles of the Elites. It has built it’s support basing on Urban Riffrafs who unfortunately can’t sustain a revolution,¶ says Modern Muhereza
The last 2021 presidential elections were really distinctive in their kind. They portrayed a variation in Uganda’s geo-politics. We saw the NRM loose in areas that were initially their strong holds and the opposition win in some of the areas it lacked ground. These variations were because of Kyagulanyi Sentamu alias Bobi Wine hailing from Buganda region who could be considered as a political novice. For the first time, a Muganda presidential candidate managed to scoop over 35% in the elections running behind a new political party called National Unity Platform (NUP).
Formed amidst a variety of controversies and court battles, NUP sought to brand itself as a wanainchi centred party and sought to address the nation’s problems in simplicity. It’s argument was that running a country wasn’t that complex as veteran politicians tend to selfishly hoodwink the masses since it doesn’t take only a professor to see that a road has potholes to get it fixed, so they said.
Kyagulanyi branded himself as a person from the ghetto and and always reintrated that “the ghetto will come to state house.” By this, he has and continues to amass a lot of support from the Urban riff rafs. They believed in him, they loved him, they saw dreams coming true, he was a hero, an idol and a complete story to many, this was a revolution to change the status quo.
However, NUP’s biggest miscalulation was thinking that a revolution can be absolutely sustained by the rifraffs. Theoretically this could be possible but practically it couldn’t if we are to study political revolutions across the world.
In 1984 when President Musevenin launched a guerrilla war against the Obote Regime, his target for recruition was mostly the elites of that time. Some were recruited from universities, some from professional work centers for example Dr. Besigye was recruited from Agha khan hospital in Kenya we’re he worked as a medicle doctor
The NRM itself formed an external wing led by the likes of Amama Mbabazi, Eriya Kategaya who were elites in their time. This was to ensure that the revolution is firm on principle, strategy and policy. Revolutions that are only based on riffrafs who are mostly illustrate or semi illetrate tend to loose the grip of power easily and tend to be debacles due to lack of principle, policy and strategy. The LRA revolution of Joseph Kony’s dream of taking over this nation went into oblivion easily because it was led by riffrafs who fell short of the core principles of leadership.
NUP’s greatest debacle was thinking that leadership wasn’t complex but overly simple. With it’s populist foundations, it unscrupulously endorsed leaders who are popular but but not well framed with the acumen of leadership. Now some of these are falling into the regime traps of bribing them to lure them to its side.
Nup having foundations of populism Politics, it has detrimented its power to penetrate into the circles of the Elites. It has built it’s support basing on Urban Riffrafs who unfortunately can’t sustain a revolution.
