Dear NRM, read the room!

COMMENT | Olivia Nalubwama | Dear National Resistance Movement (NRM), the July 23 ‘March2Parliament’ against corruption might be your best opportunity yet.

Think not of it as a jigger you must crush with your brute force, tear gas, and stray bullets. A true yellow-blooded NRM member in the manner of those courageous revolutionary young men and women who took up 27 guns and tenaciously shot their way to power should be proud of these young people speaking up against corruption.

Wama, isn’t this why you fought forus? You once shone with promise but alas, you ripped up constitutional safeguards like term limits and presidential age limits, setting yourself and the country on a slippery slope of entanglement. Fueled by your long incumbency, the hubris has set in; winning another election is child’s play for you. Thus, ignoring dissent comes easily to you.

Yet, ponder that history our president loves. Those who saw Uganda’s first ruling party after independence, the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), at the height of its reign muse that they could not have imagined that UPC would be the weakling it is today.

If there was ever an opportunity for you to appear like the sane one, the civilized adult in this so-called Uganda, the good guy – this is your moment to reset. This is the moment to take the mirror and ask yourselves like a proper Ugandan, “What are we on?”

Dear NRM, read the room and take back the reins of your dithering legacy. Since 1986, your party has had the longest time to take Uganda out of the doldrums. Instead, we now have jaded Ugandans thinking that even colonization was a better option. Colonization was a barefaced extractive industry sprinkled with a few schools, faith institutions, and hospitals to keep the native serfs drunk while the extractive industry soldiered on.

Worse still, younger Ugandans now parade TikToks of brutal despots like Idi Amin as being a better option than today’s NRM. Ba dia, if young people today are whitewashing colonization or the brutal regimes of yesteryears as better options, that is not a mark of steady progress.

That is unadulterated steady regression. Dear NRM, the road ahead is long and arduous but it is ours to take. Building the Uganda we desire is the work of every Ugandan. Therefa, let us address the infantilization of Ugandans/citizens. The young people, the bulk of Ugandans, are not the president’s bazzukulu.

While he is grandfatherly, he is not the grandfather of young Ugandans. He is the president – the highest public servant of Ugandans, a whole fountain of honour. If ‘my fellow citizen’ is not good enough for him when addressing the people, try ‘my masters’ Imagine President Museveni starting every national address with “My dear masters, my bosses, my landlords, my employers, ba loodi…”.

The infantilization of citizens implies that the president like a wizened grandfatherly patriarch knows best; his every word like an oracle. And good African values espouse that only foreign-sponsored homosexuals and imperialists dare question their elders/grandparents.

Dear NRM, now is the time. Side with your fellow citizens. Discard the resistance in your name. Shake off your condescending ‘no change’ vibes. With your cabinet of fishermen, manifest that wise fisherman who watches the tide and acts accordingly. The tide is tayaad of ‘In 1986, we fought, we did not eat sausages, we bled for this country…’.

As you retell Uganda’s political history with 1986 as the sunkissed year, remember that those who fought cannot exist without those they fought for. When the president warned the young people would face fire – what did he mean? Is this how the revolution ends, with those who fought fighting against those they fought for?

The inspector general of government called upon Ugandans to join the fight against corruption having made the compelling argument that ordinary Ugandans face the brunt of corruption. Now if a peaceful protest is how Ugandans choose to fight corruption, why respond with fire?

Are you for Ugandans or corruption? Is there a manual in the annals of the decrepit NRM Kyadondo headquarters about the proper and lawful ways to fight corruption? Forgive us for being misled by the quisling Constitution of Uganda. Besides, who needs constitutionalism when the NRM brought sleep?

Dear NRM, we cannot sleep forever. Stop lecturing us on how angry we are; how you disapprove of our unarmed displays of this anger; and how you will only dialogue on your terms.

A young man recently earned himself six years in jail on charges of hate speech. Through his TikTok account, the young man spewed the vilest insults expressing his utter distaste for the president.

His opinion was distasteful – words we cannot publish without searing our eyes. Similar to the words used by your stooges like Full Figure, Basajja Mivule, Yiga Kisakyamukama, who bared his buttocks to curse the opposition. We get it – it is not hate speech if it is for the NRM.

This is the dilemma of your dithering legacy – would you rather the young man took to the streets in an ‘unlawful demonstration’? Or would you prefer a ka bush war in the deforested bushes of Uganda?

Dear NRM, how many ways can we say this? Read the room! Listen to your true masters – no, not the gun. Not those BUBU quasi-military uniforms you adorn in Kyankwanzi where you serenade yourselves about your steady progress when all around you, steady regression settles comfortably. Surprise yourselves and your withering yellowness; listen to your true masters – Ugandans.

In the words of President Yoweri Museveni, “What sort of country is this which does not see far…Uganda cannot be destroyed and we simply watch.”

*******

Olivia Nalubwama is a “tayaad Muzukulu, tired of mediocrity and impunity” smugmountain@gmail.com

THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE OBSERVER