THE NATIONAL RESISTANCE MOVEMENT & THE PATRIOTIC LEAGUE OF UGANDA FORMATIONS: Rejuvenation or Dissolution? An Analysis
By Hon Dr Godfrey Pereza Ahabwe
- Introduction
On the morning of September, 8, 2026, on NBS morning breeze’s Topical discussion, Hon. Augustine Ruzindana, former MP for Ruhaama County and NRM Historical, was hosted by Mr. Kaggwa Njala. The topic was NRM versus PLU and whether the latter is a designed replacement of the former. Hon. Ruzindana’s views can be summarized as follows:
- PLU is a civic registered organization within NRM for purposes of rejuvenating the NRM rather than a splinter group. PLU has no independent ideological orientation separate from that of the NRM
- Like any other big party, the NRM longevity necessitates emergency of such tendencies or formations. DP had a Mobilizer’s Group too but never replaced it.
- Although Uganda adopted the multiparty political dispensation, aspects of the movement system remained. For instance, the CDF, Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s involvement in civic activities under PLU and the fight against corruption is no different from military officers serving as Ministers in Government, a tendency that was prevalent under the movement system.
- It is not unnatural that generational pressures mount within political organizations. It is a natural law.
- President Museveni’s possible handover of office will be from him to another person guided by constitutional order even if that person is MK rather than to his son as it is in dynastic orders. MK must pass through the rigors of constitutional commands like any other eligible Ugandan.
I partially agree with Hon Augustine Ruzindana’s views but with a slight modification.
2.The Theory and Context
President Museveni was a student of the Marxist ideology which almost entirely shaped his political and military struggles. In one of his write-ups in the early years of the NRA bush war (probably in 1982), he wrote on the Marxist philosophy of the Unity and Struggle of Opposites. This is one of the laws of dialectical materialism that explains how change and development arise from contradictions within social systems. The emphasis of this law is that opposing forces or tendencies can exist together within the same system and can actually be symbiotic.
However, these opposing forces or tendencies actually are in conflict and tension and their interaction drives change and development. Simply put, things change because they contain internal contradictions whose opposing tendencies interact and struggle with one another! The contradictions need not always lead with destruction but to adjustment, transformation or even replacement of the existing system. My contention, therefore, is that PLU, having in the past declared NRM moribund, comes in as a replacement rather than an influencer of reform.
The other law of dialectical materialism is the Negation of thee Negation. It provides that development occurs through a process in which an existing state is overcome, producing a more advanced form although it retains some useful elements of the old order. The old is not entirely discarded. Although it gives way to the new, it is still incorporated into a more comprehensive framework, though passive. I submit that while the emergency of PLU may appear as another unfolding political organization, I view it more as a response to contradictions that have surged within Uganda’s political, generational, and socioeconomic system.
For clarity, PLU first emerged as the MK movement but was formally launched in February 2024 as a registered civic organization. For now, it asserts itself as a pressure group, and social movement within the NRM and not a separate political group. The question is; what contradictions within the NRM organization that have facilitated the conditions for the PLU formation?
First, there is continuity versus generational change. Since 1986, the NRM has been the dominant political force with its unchanged leader now 82 years old. The liberal socioeconomic and political environment created political consciousness among young Ugandans who evidently comprise over 75 percent of the entire population. This consciousness, of necessity, created demand for young Ugandans to share in the country’s economic gains and through participation in the determining of the country’s future. The message PLU is currently putting across is that of youth or generational leadership, civic participation and economic empowerment.
Second, political stability versus socioeconomic transformation. It goes without saying that stability generates expectations for jobs, youth empowerment, anti-corruption crusades and socioeconomic transformation in general. In a nutshell, continued political continuity creates demand for employment, better public services, accountability, better and improved livelihoods. Of recent, PLU has shifted from public mobilization through Barazas to grassroots mobilization through registration.
This is an attempt to reconcile two opposing tendencies: central coordination and grassroots participation. The NRM has for the last 40 years achieved quantitative change in form of urbanization, expansion of the educated population, demographic changes, with the youth comprising the majority of the population, technological and social media expansion, among others. Correspondingly, there has also been youth unemployment and underemployment, increased demand for accountability, and the like, which are more qualitative. The PLU, therefore, does not disregard the said achievements.
In their own statements, they emphasize continuity with the NRM liberation tradition, while simultaneously emphasizing patriotism, youth participation, civic responsibility, socio-economic transformation, and generational leadership. Although the two formations seem interdependent, they are potentially tension-producing organizational forces. For instance, instead of PLU operating within NRM, it is the NRM being incorporated, or rather recruited, into PLU.
3 The Case for Rejuvenation
This scenario puts PLU as a generational renewal for NRM that has held onto power for 40 years. PLU targets the urban elites as well as the youth under the MK brand, in effect reaching out to the segments of voters whom the NRM structures struggle to engage. Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa has urged that PLU does not compete with NRM, but rather complements it. From this point of view, therefore, PLU injects new energy and succession planning into an aging movement without splitting it. This is the view of the Hon Augustine Ruzindana and Hon Emmanuel Dombo, the NRM spokesperson on the NBS Frontline on 8th September, 2026.
4.The case for Dissolution
This case asserts that rather than PLU operating within NRM, the other way round seems to be the case. PLU is increasingly shaping cabinet formation, policy initiation, and legislation, a shift of gravity away from the formal party secretariat towards the parallel structure. NRM members of the National Executive Council and the Central Executive Committee, as well as the leadership in the lower NRM structures, are increasingly self-identifying themselves as NRM/PLU!
The core challenge for NRM is that the party has long guarded against multiple internal power centers, yet PLU’s emergence creates exactly that kind of rival center. In fact, the Chairman of NRM, while addressing MPs in NALI, Kyankwanzi, stated that the emergence of the MK movement was a result of weak mobilization strategies by the NRM secretariat, in effect endorsing or justifying its existence. This view is my modification.
- 5. Conclusion.
Where then does the analysis leave the question?
Neither rejuvenation nor dissolution, on its own, fully settles the question. The rejuvenation scenario holds only if PLU remains primarily a mobilization arm that renews NRM’s political base while facilitating succession within the broader NRM political framework. The dissolution scenario, on the other hand, becomes more plausible if PLU continues to develop parallel structures, patronage networks, and loyalty mechanisms that increasingly outcompete the formal NRM party apparatus, effectively turning NRM into a shell brand over a PLU-controlled political reality.
Available evidence so far points to two opposing yet interconnected formations rather than a clear displacement of one by the other. There is a formal alliance, expressed through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), between NRM and PLU, while PLU continues to insist that it does not intend to break away from NRM. At the same time, there are signals of possible NRM–PLU competition for the cards.
For instance, the Secretary in the Office of the PLU Chairman, Hon. Daudi Kabanda, has pointed to the fact that PLU will field a Presidential Candidate in the 2031 elections while Hon. Milly Babalanda, Minister for the Presidency, has maintained that President Yoweri Museveni will be on the ballot for NRM in the same election [Babalanda has since cracked & pivoted after publicly apologizing to the PLU Chairman-editor). This suggests that both dynamics are operating simultaneously rather than one clearly replacing the other for now. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
