NRM’s Electoral Chaos Opens Doors for Opposition Infiltration in Party’s Grassroots Structures

By Kazibwe Jamil

As the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) gears up for its crucial grassroots elections, there is widespread concern among the NRM fraternity about the laxity and incompetence of the party’s electoral commission, which is conducting preliminary internal election activities without a verified register.

While expressions of interest and issuance of nomination forms are in full swing across the country, it is baffling that these activities are being carried out without any mechanism to confirm party membership. In simple terms, there is no reliable register at the parish level to ascertain who belongs to the NRM and who doesn’t.

This glaring oversight has created a dangerous vacuum, one that opposition forces are all too eager to exploit. Informed sources indicate that strategists from rival camps are quietly instructing their supporters to take advantage of the ongoing NRM disorganization by infiltrating and contesting for key grassroots positions under the NRM banner.

Their aim? To compromise the party’s internal structures from within, ultimately weakening the NRM’s ability to consolidate power ahead of 2026. This is not just a clerical error, it is a national political risk.

With over 72,000 villages participating in these internal processes, the scale of potential infiltration is massive. Even more disheartening is the fact that this is a preventable mess.

Surprisingly or not surprisingly, the NRM Secretariat and Electoral Commission have had five years, yes, five long years, to plan, prepare, and preempt such logistical and political vulnerabilities. But what do we see? Total unpreparedness, amateur coordination, and leadership that seems completely out of touch with the strategic importance of these activities.

The registers in which billions of money have been sunk are not available in the 72,000 villages where preliminary activities are already taking place, which will climax into structure and LC1 elections, slated for the 6th of May, 2025.

So, where are these registers? Why are they not in the hands of the parish registrars at the very moment they are needed most? The grassroots are the lifeblood of any political party, and failure to protect this foundation could prove disastrous for the ruling establishment.

Let it be made clear: internal sabotage, if successful, does not begin in Parliament or during national campaigns. It begins quietly, insidiously, in the unguarded spaces of local party activities, spaces the NRM has now left wide open.

If the NRM leadership continues to treat its internal structures with such complacency, it may soon find itself in the awkward position of being weakened from within. And by the time this reality sets in, it might be too late to course-correct.

The time for urgent intervention is now. The registers must be distributed immediately. Oversight must be reinforced. And those responsible for this breakdown must be held accountable. Otherwise, we may be watching the beginning of an opposition-assisted implosion, orchestrated not through external aggression, but internal recklessness.