The National Resistance Movement (NRM) members of parliament have endorsed the party's central executive committee (CEC) resolution to have President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni as their sole candidate in the 2021 polls.
Last month, the NRM top decision making organ, CEC made the resolution at its retreat at Chobe Safari Lodge, Nwoya district. The position by the NRM MPs was taken after a presentation by the party secretary general Justine Kasule Lumumba entitled "Towards 2021: Milestones & Strategies for the NRM Party".
According to a statement issued by the NRM senior information manager Rogers Mulindwa, Lumumba in her presentation to the legislators currently attending an eight-day retreat at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi read out the Chobe resolutions.
After her address, the Eastern Region PWDs representative Hellen Asamo moved a motion saying that Uganda needed President Museveni now more than ever before for his firm guidance and mentorship of the party membership.
Mulindwa said Asamo's position was unanimously supported by the legislators. The endorsement by the NRM parliamentary caucus means that Museveni who has been Uganda's president since 1986, will now contest for a sixth term in office. He will be 76 years old in 2021.
In the 2016 presidential elections, the NRM party also endorsed Museveni as the sole presidential candidate after former prime minister and then party secretary general Amama Mbabazi expressed interest in contesting against Museveni. Mbabazi was subsequently forced out the party.
NRM MPs resolution (in full)
RESOLUTION
Motion: That the National Resistance Movement Caucus meeting in Retreat at the National Leadership Institute, Kyankwanzi from the 13th to 20th March 2019 and its hereby resolved.
1. To deeply appreciate and salute the leader of our revolution and our Movement, as well as President of Uganda, Gen. Yoweri K. Museveni, for his visionary, bold, courageous, steadfast and consistent leadership of our people in their struggles against dictatorship and for democracy and freedom - spanning more than 50 years.
2. To warmly and strongly recommend to the membership of the NRM, our national leadership organs, the continuation in leadership of both state and party up to 2021 and beyond - of our beloved leader, Gen Yoweri K. Museveni.
3. To warmly commend and salute the Central Executive Committee, for leading the way during the Chobe Retreat, for the resolutions we are making and adopting today.
Justification: We are the most critical and delicate juncture in the process of transformation of our country. This cannot be the point to let go our visionary and unifier. We need Mzee more now, than ever before.
We need his firm guidance as we execute a qualitative leap from backwardness to modernity.
We need his firm guidance in this dawn of the digital, nuclear, and space age.
We need his firm guidance in mentoring and growing the ideological, political and technical cadreship for protecting the gains of our revolution, as well as securing the future of the Ugandan and African people.
17th March 2019, Kyankwanzi.
Source
