Comment: Why The Strength of NRM Lies in Its Ideology and Broad Based Approach
The National Resistance Movement (NRM) political party has been in charge of this country for the last three decades, and a lot of positives have been registered in most sectors although this success can be attributed to its ideological clarity and pursuing a broad-based government, something that many political pundits continue to miss out.
By definition, an ideology is a set of beliefs, especially the political beliefs on which people, political parties, or countries base their actions.
It is also the lens through which a person views the world, and a total sum of a person’s values, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations. It exists within society, within groups, and between people. It shapes our thoughts, actions, and interactions, along with what happens in society at large.
It may also be defined as a system of ideas and ideals that form the basis of economic, political and social organizations. It is further defined as a body of doctrine and beliefs that guide an individual, and a set of political beliefs or a set of ideas that characterize a particular culture. It is composed of four basic characteristics: it must have power over cognition, must provide guidance towards action; and it must be logically coherent, and be capable of guiding one’s evaluations.
Like religion, an ideology is a collection of beliefs and ideas that shape a person’s behavior and perception of the world. Religion, for example, is an ideology with a specific set of beliefs informed by a particular religious text, like the Bible, which strongly influences how those with the ideology conduct themselves and perceive those around them. Additionally, followers adhere to the ideas and rules set out in their religious text with little variation or interpretation.
Ideology is an adjective that describes political, cultural, or religious beliefs, and as a body of ideas, whereby those who agree with the main idea of something take an ideological stand to support it, and this is why all those proclaiming to belong to a political party, must stand and support all that the political party stands for. This is why failure to adhere to this should invoke disciplinary action against the culprit just to ensure party discipline and build loyal cadreship and cohesion in the party that will lead to real political party development.
We simply can’t continue having parties with no clear ideological campus and then expect mature multi-party dispensation.
Political parties embody a range of ideals covering government, economics, education, healthcare, foreign policy, and more and thus require shared clarity in party ideology for political correctness and governance. Therefore, a political party that lacks a clear ideology shouldn’t be given the mandate to manage a country’s affairs because we have paid enough price in Africa with subjecting our nations to political lab tests.
An ideology is so crucial for any political party and all members and supporters ought to hear the call by the president and continue preaching the ideology and making disciples of the movement, just like president Museveni said in Nambole recently, NRM followers should appreciate and religiously follow their party ideology to the later, just like Christians follow Christianity without question, it’s through such a gospel that our supporters and citizens at large will understand what the party stands for; in order to join the stead trek to real social transformation and development.
Ideology is crucial for a liberation movement like ours or, indeed, any political group that wants to manage society, for it is a compass that guides a proper political organization, by providing the parameters of how it correctly relates with different religious groups, traditional groups, the business community, peasants, land owners, landless peasants in such a manner that people remain united and becomes progressive in life.
Uganda has been lucky to have a leader whose ideological campus knows no-fault and for that matter, we, as a country have taken a long forward leap in achieving what seemed impossible in other people’s imaginations. A former president of Kenya is quoted to have wished for a supermarket where he could buy peace and donate it to Uganda but as we speak now, due to ideological clarity, Uganda is the only peaceful country in the region and we are now providers of a safe haven to more than one million refugees from the region including Kenya.
The clarity in ideology and the stability in the administration, has led Uganda this far, we can now as its evident proudly call ourselves Ugandans once again, for our dignity as people and country were restored on that beautiful day on 25th Jan 1986. Of course many Ugandans out of sheer ignorance or self-seeking would want us to stop referring to the 1986 liberation day as a memorable day in our nation’s history and prefer not to remind the young generation about the struggle for liberation and where we were as a country before 1986.
However, they can not wish it away and history will always be recorded about the deeds and sacrifices of our liberators. Because of their sacrifices, the whole country is peaceful with no war or rebellion within its borders, no one would imagine this would happen in our lifetime, but it has been possible thanks to the 1986 liberation.
Because of this ideological clarity, the country has been able to achieve tremendously in terms of peace within and outside. We now export and enforce peace in the region, where we once exported refugees. We are now exporting agricultural and industrial products and we are providing a safe haven to those seeking refuge, we are exporting milk produce worth 91.8bn to Kenya alone. Just last year, we had an export surplus to the region and we have reduced the number of goods imported.
Actually the border and trade standoff we have with our neighbors maybe because of the realized fact that they are losing their number one spot to the little known Uganda, we are producing, milk, sugar, cereals, etc in surplus. This is all because of assured sustained peace and security making it possible for our people to embark on mass production without worrying about the future. The road network is at its best since independence, the power supply is reaching every corner, of our country, all municipalities and district headquarters are on the national power grid and connected to the entire nation with tarmac road networks. One can transport his produce from far areas safely to markets to the Centre at any time. Literacy levels have reached 80%, immunization coverage is at 95% and life expectancy has risen to 63 all this can be attributed to a steady clarity in ideology.
In just thirty years we have 43 universities, of which 9 are public and the rest are privately owned, so, you can see that with clarity in your ideology, you can push a country to prosperity and Uganda as a country is on the path to greatness against all odds. Actually, the unemployment challenges we are facing is simply labor pains of the NRM success story, in terms of education and immunization services and other properly thought out social policies.
But this has not come cheaply, with opposition from both within and outside, the president has met stiff resistance from those who have deliberately refused to join him in the struggle to transform our nation and those who simply don’t understand the NRM ideology and would wish things to happens by default, however, he has insisted in his ideological clarity and built all foundations needed for a take-off.
It should be noted that this stance to do things guided by a clear ideology is not new to the NRM, right from its inception, the NRM government has been pursuing a broad-based government in order to tap into different talents, skills and promotion of reconciliation with different groups that were formally opposed to it. It fished from all the then existing political groupings and a number are now senior cadres of the movement. The NRM believes that everyone is talented and gifted in his own way and can make a significant contribution given an opportunity, it believes in empowering everyone regardless of political shades, provided you accept the call and slowly get baptized into its ideology.
Just like the biblical verse where our Lord Jesus says “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” ( Matthew 11:28) so is the NRM call to service to everyone including those opposed to. This philosophy has been misunderstood and many NRM loyal cadres have been infuriated for they see this as betrayal by the very person and the party they have supported for decades, only for new people to be recognized and appointed in various positions while cadres look on. Of course, this is not the desired practice as it demotivates and destroys the confidence and discourages party loyalty, however it has promoted reconciliation and ensured continuity of the leadership.
Recently, we saw the president reaching out to individuals that we least expected to be deployed, and many elites and intellectuals in both NRM mainstream and opposition spent weeks debating and wondering how such individuals could catch the eye of the fountain of honor, forgetting that this is how the NRM has been operating right from the liberation days.
The choosing of the bus as the party symbol too, explains this development— we know that a bus admits every person regardless of status in life and at every stage, people enter and disembark at their free will. It also has a single driver and as long as the driver is sober and experienced, you will safely reach your destination. You don’t change a good driver, you simply have to fix parts on the bus that require fixing as you move on. When we talk of steady progress, we are still talking about the same bus and those occupying it, we will find people of all categories, age, education, tribe, religion, economic and social status in the same bus– some on a long journey and others on short ones but all on the same bus. With the same capable driver, the same bus moves on the four tyres which happens to be the four principles of NRM as a political party, these tyres are democracy, socio-economic transformation, prosperity and nationalism/ Pan-Africanism.
This ideology, however, if it is to work and outlast us all, should be preached right from the smallest units of society, just like the Juche ideology in North Korea became part of the entire national political, cultural, religious and social value system, and entire nation stands and known to be a Juche nation, so should the movement be. It MUST be taught and preached, in schools, churches, mosques, homes, institutions of higher learning, training institutions, among interest groups and all citizens, let it be part of our culture and nation’s value system and appreciated by us all and known across the ocean, be studied and books written about the movement ideology and let Uganda be identified by the same ideology for the generations to come.
However, for this to happen we must deal with challenges that the country is facing like; corruption, miss-use of public resources, inadequate service delivery and do away with all kinds of nepotism and tribalism and social injustices that seem to be undoing the liberation efforts. We must make sure that cadres are aware of how expensive it is for them to engage in such acts that put the party and country in general in a d light.
With continued ideological clarity that is shared by all Ugandans and a steadily uninterrupted political environment, NONE will stand in our way to greatness.
For God and my Country
Mr Kayondo is an educationist and a political analyst
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