The National Resistance Movement-NRM party leaders are deliberating on possibilities of stopping internal primaries in Buganda region.
The move is intended to shield their members from internal conflicts ahead of the forthcoming general elections.
Rosemary Nansubuga Sseninde, the Director for Mobilization at the NRM Secretariat says they do not want to subject their members to primary elections to choose their flagbearers for the various positions, due to grave consequences the party suffered in the last general election.
Speaking at the launch of the exercise to update the NRM voters register in Masaka, Sseninde urged the party leadership at districts, municipalities and sub-county levels to initiate processes of generating consensus between the various intending aspirants for the same elective positions to avoid primaries.
She emphasized that the party’s top leadership has preferred to pilot the process in the Buganda region where the party was badly defeated in the last general elections.
She urged the district NRM councils to set up a special committee of prominent people and ask them to carry out internal vetting of the candidates based on their potential, such that the party does not have to conduct primary elections that have previously resulted in prolonged conflicts among the members.
Sseninde challenged the NRM registrars at districts and lower structures to fully support the party’s efforts towards generating a clear voters’ register, by avoiding multiple registrations and eliminating ghosts.
He explains that unlike in the previous exercise, the registrars are now required to conduct village meetings where the members will openly audit the registers, to approve the authenticity of the records contained in them.
Umar Ssebulime, the NRM Electoral Commission Registrar for Greater Masaka is optimistic that the idea of building consensus among intending aspirants will save the party from many problems.
According to Ssebulime, besides preventing unwanted divisions among the members, the idea also saves that party from incurring huge expenses of organizing primaries.
Meanwhile, the party has started updating its register ahead of party primaries. The exercise that started this morning will run till Saturday, February 1st, 2025 across all the villages in Uganda.
The exercise intends to enable persons who have turned 18 years old and others who missed the earlier exercise to register in the yellow book to do so.
The secretariat has confirmed sending registerers to 72,000 villages across the country and asked party members to embrace the exercise because this is the last register update before party primaries.
English 