What political ideology does NRM stand for?

A photo montage of NRM chairman Yoweri Museveni and members of the ruling party’s parliamentary caucus. File photo  

In the Ugandan political context, it is one of the most confused and misused words. It is a word thrown around at leisure by people engaged in politics, but without the slightest self-examination.

In the days preceding Tuesday’s Liberation Day celebration, party stalwarts on TVs and radios delved into achievements of the past and the plateful of ideas the party has prepared. Distressingly, like usually in the debates, there was a mix-up of the concept of ideology and ideas.

The Cambridge International dictionary defines ideology as a set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party or organisation is based. An idea on the other hand can be defined as a thought, a belief or opinions; or a purpose or reason.

Political ideology is usually synonymous with political culture and political tradition in a country. The most common on which governments are built being Marxism, Capitalism, Social-Democracy, Communism, among others.

American journalist turned sociologist and Harvard University don, Daniel Bell, in his post-war era book The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties described ideology as a historically located belief system that fused ideas with passion, sought to convert ideas into social levers, and in transforming ideas transformed people as well.

“When it becomes a striking force, ideology looks at the world with eyes wide shut, a closed system that prefabricates answers to any question that might be asked,” Bell wrote in the book published in 1960.

You must have heard of NRM officials blaming the country’s slow progress to meaningful development on “ideologically disoriented people”.

President Museveni, the leading ideologue in NRM and, who according to his memoirs Sowing the Mustard Seed, is a student of Marxist teachings, has on several occasions outlined the strategic bottlenecks hampering social-economic transformation and political integration in Uganda, East Africa or the continent and ideological disorientation ranks at the top.

Year in and year out, Resident District Commissioners, Members of Parliament and sections of civil servants are taken to the National Leadership Institute (NALI) at Kyankwanzi for teaching of the NRM’s ideology.

In the new 10-Point Programme released at the marking of 50 years of independence in 2012, the President listed fighting ideological disorientation and eliminating sectarianism as the two key priorities of the government.

The NRM’s deputy secretary general and minister without Portfolio in Charge of Political Mobilisation, Richard Todwong, at one time talked of sacking civil servants who aren’t “ideologically clear.”

“If you aren’t ideologically clear and it affects our space, we shall remove you,” he argued.

Ideology in its true application is a lot more like religion. In several political dispensations across the world – China, North Korea, Russia, and United States – ideology keeps differing. In Africa, being at the receiving end of either the West or East, goal posts have kept and keep changing for that matter.

However, several political observers argue that the terrain of politics has changed immensely and as such, the conception or rather reverence of ideology, which in most cases and traditionally went hand-in-hand with revolutions, is thus no longer lucrative.

What is NRM’s ideology?
The years before and after the 1960s and 70s in Africa were packed explicitly with ideological parties and politicians.