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Uganda’s ruling party proposes Museveni for sixth term in office


Uganda’s ruling party National Resistance Movement (NRM) top organ has endorsed President Yoweri Museveni as its flag bearer in the upcoming presidential elections.

The decision gives Museveni a shot for a sixth consecutive five-year term in office. Should he win, Museveni will have an opportunity to rule for a record four decades.

Uganda’s next presidential and general elections are two years away.

NRM party members had at a recent retreat christened President Museveni the ‘theoretician and principal strategist of the movement’.

“To emphatically recommend to the membership of the Movement and its organs that Yoweri Museveni, our leader and General of the African resistance, continues leading the Movement in 2021 and beyond as we eliminate the bottlenecks ‘to transformation’, the members noted in resolution after the retreat,” the party announced.

Asked whether the party had given Museveni the nod,  NRM spokesman said; “Exactly. That is what it means. I can only say that there is no danger in doing that. There is no law breached. This matter can continue to be sold to other party members as we get closer to the National Delegates Conference in November, this year.”

Suspicision that Museveni would seek re-elections gained momentum when he strongly supported a contentious Constitutional Amendment Bill, now law, to remove 75 years as the upper threshold age beyond which a person would be ineligible to stand for President.

The provision meant that Museveni, now 74 years old, would have been unable to contest.