Twenty nine years ago (June 21, 1995), President Museveni sent out an open letter to Constituent Assembly delegates who were members of what was the Movement Caucus, saying Uganda would not return to a multiparty political dispensation unless circumstances forced the country to do so.

He used the words “imposed on us by circumstances”.
“The only time we should advocate for multipartism should be when our society has undergone a sufficient metamorphosis to permit healthy polarisation. According to us, that time is not now,” Mr Museveni wrote in the June 21, 1995, letter.

He, however, hastened to add that if such a time came, the Movement would be open to the idea of competing with other political organisations for political power in the event that Ugandans voted in a referendum for a return to a multiparty political dispensation.

“Should the people of Uganda in future decide to go for multi-partyism, we should be able to pursue [the Movement] objectives even under the new [multiparty] circumstances,” Mr Museveni wrote in an eight-page letter.
Mr Museveni’s letter came a day after the Constituent Assembly had voted to constitutionalise the Movement and lock political parties out of the political arena.

The votes
Some 199 delegates voted in favour of continuation of “no party rule”, 68 against it while two, notably delegates of the National Resistance Army (NRA), later Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF), Gen David Tinyefuza (now Sejusa), and Lt Col Sserwanga Lwanga, abstained.

That vote culminated in the inclusion in the 1995 Constitution of Article 269, which barred parties from engaging in “any activities that may interfere with the movement political system”. They could not operate branches, hold public rallies or sponsor candidates for public office.

According to a copy of the Wednesday Monitor of June 28, 1995, the President pointed out that though it would not be as good to pursue the Movement’s objectives under a multiparty political dispensation as it would have been under the Movement system, trying to pursue those objectives under a multiparty dispensation would be better than sitting back and doing nothing.

“In deciding this issue we need to think of the adherents to the Movementism and the activists. To tell them that in case the population of Uganda decides to go multi-party in future, the present political home of NRM would no longer be in the contest for political power is the same as telling them that they are moving along a cul-de-sac, or a kind of gogoro (a game where children slide downhill riding on a banana stem),” Mr Museveni wrote.

Scenario building
A report in the Monitor of June 28, 1995, quoted Mr Jotham Tumwesigye saying the President’s letter was looking at the worst case scenario and did not by any way mean that there had been a shift in the NRM’s position on multiparty politics.

“If the worst came to the worst and the people of Uganda voted for a return to multipartism in a referendum, then naturally there will be no alternative for those who adhere to the Movement idea to contesting elections as a party,” Mr Tumwesigye said.
Mr Tumwesigye was at the time serving as the Deputy National Political Commissar and Director for Legal Affairs at the NRM Secretariat.

He subsequently served as Inspector General of Government (IGG), chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) and a judge of the Supreme Court.

Confusion
In his letter, Mr Museveni indicated that he had been prompted to write upon the receipt of information from Dr Speciosa Wandira Kazibwe, indicating that confusion were reigning supreme in the Movement Caucus in the CA over two issues.
Dr Kazibwe was at the time the vice president and CA delegate representing Kigulu South Constituency. She was also a member of the National Resistance Council (NRC), which was the Parliament of the time.
The first source of confusion evolved around fears by National Resistance Army/ Movement (NRA/M) adherents and activists over the fate of the Movement and its supporters in case Ugandans were to in future decide through a referendum to return the country to a multiparty political dispensation.

There were also fears that that some leading personalities in the Movement figures were weakening it from within by making contradictory statements in public. 
Mr Tumwesigye told Monitor that the leading Movement personalities that were being referred to, and were alluded to in Mr Museveni’s letter were NRA delegate Lt Col Sserwanga Lwanga and Local Government minister Jaberi Bidandi Sali.

The two had come up with a proposal that would have led to a return to a multiparty political dispensation within five years of the first election. They were of the view that a return to multiparty politics should not be decided through a referendum.
The proposal provided for, among others, a code of conduct for political parties. It also provided for guidelines on the formation and registration of political parties, the nature and conduct of political and civic education, and the conduct of political campaigns.

“We are trying to set in motion a process that would bring consensus, but this is a preliminary position. It is sort of thinking aloud,” Mr Bidandi Ssali had said in his defence of the proposal.

Allaying fears
Mr Museveni’s letter sought to allay the fears and clear the confusion regarding the position on the future of the Movement.
Mr Museveni pointed out that the apparently contradictory public statements have been part and parcel of the NRM’s growth and that they do not necessarily weaken the Movement.

“First of all, this type of behaviour has always been common in the NRM and in the pre-NRM political organisations that spearheaded the struggle for democracy. Second, [it] is actually a source of strength, eventually, when people realise that our organisation is tolerant, to some extent, to the erring elements within itself,” Mr Museveni wrote.
The newspaper noted that Mr Museveni gave several examples to back up his argument.

He, for example, pointed out that the late Fred Rwigyema once executed eight prisoners of war, contrary to NRA policy, but was only sentenced to a severe reprimand because he and many other combatants lacked ideological clarity over such issues and had to be persuaded by a combination of harshness and explanations.
Mr Museveni said the NRA/M is so accommodative that you can move out of it and back as long as you have not committed crimes.
The biggest example of this tendency he said, were Brig Chefe Ali, who had been misled by his brother and the late Prof Dani Wadada Nabudere to drop out of the army, only to return to the NRA in 1984 after he “discovered the hollowness of the Nabudere group”.

Museveni said though the value of tolerance was proved throughout the history of the anti-Idi Amin and later the NRM war, “ever since 1972, a lot of the people and government to avert what they called a national catastrophe” in the region.
That was the first time that Mr Museveni came nearest to pointing to the possibility of the NRM competing with other parties for power.

Mr Tumwesigye emphasised that Museveni’s letter was not the final position on the future of multiparty politics, but part of an ongoing debate in the NRM Caucus.
The letter, however, confirmed the widespread belief then, that Mr Museveni was the one pulling the strings that were moving delegates in the Constituent Assembly.

Locking parties out: 
Mr Museveni’s letter came a day after the Constituent Assembly had voted to constitutionalise the Movement and lock political parties out of the political arena.
Some 199 delegates voted in favour of continuation of “no party rule”, 68 against it while two, notably delegates of the National Resistance Army (NRA), later Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (UPDF), Gen David Tinyefuza (now Sejusa), and Lt Col Sserwanga Lwanga, abstained.