Opinion: Shambolic NRM Primaries: The Most Plausible Reason Museveni’s 10 Million Voters Stayed Away

By Lawrence Mayambala 

Low voter turnout remains one of the most troubling puzzles in Uganda’s electoral politics. So when President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni recently asserted that the majority of abstainers were actually NRM supporters, many dismissed the claim as political theatre. Yet, on closer inspection, that assertion is neither far-fetched nor laughable. In fact, it is disturbingly plausible.

The National Resistance Movement’s internal elections are famously energetic. Across the country’s more than 72,000 villages—which double as NRM polling stations—primaries typically ignite extraordinary enthusiasm. These contests transform quiet communities into political beehives, drawing massive participation and, at times, even pulling in known opposition supporters intrigued by the scale and intensity of the exercise.

However, this initial excitement is routinely followed by deep frustration.

The NRM Electoral Commission has consistently failed to match the magnitude of these internal processes with adequate administrative preparedness. What begins as an energetic democratic exercise often collapses into anticlimax, marred by incompetence, acrimony, logistical chaos, blatant rigging, and in extreme cases, loss of life. The cumulative effect is widespread disillusionment among party faithful.

More damaging still is the absence of effective internal mechanisms to manage the fallout. There is no structured political counselling, no systematic outreach, and no deliberate effort to reconcile or heal members—particularly those who feel openly cheated out of the process. Aggrieved candidates and their supporters are largely left to nurse their wounds in silence.

The only available avenue for redress is a hastily constituted tribunal of lawyers that mirrors the adversarial nature of conventional courts. While legally sound, this mechanism is ill-suited to the political task of reconciliation. It emphasizes winners and losers, appeals and counter-appeals, rather than healing, cohesion, and reintegration. As such, it fails to restore internal harmony within the party.

Consequently, the NRM often transitions into national campaigns carrying heavy internal baggage. Millions of members, candidates, and mobilisers enter the general election season bruised, bitter, and emotionally disengaged—victims of a process they believe betrayed them.

It is therefore highly probable that these disgruntled party members constitute the largest bloc of abstainers during general elections. For many, staying away from the ballot becomes a silent form of protest—a way of pushing back against a flawed internal system without crossing the ideological line of voting for the opposition.

Abstention, in this context, is not apathy. It is a muted rebellion.

My two cents.

The author is an NRM cadre and a student of the party’s internal electoral processes.