By Mulengera Reporters
Barnabas Taremwa (54), an influential raching businessman from Kashari & also brother to Gen Salim Saleh’s wife Joviah, says NRM must begin discussing succession & prepare a line of younger cadres to replace M7 & current leaders. Taremwa says its bad for NRM to wait and begin hunting for successor on the very day M7 ceases to be President. In veiled reference to Bobi Wine’s People Power Movement, Taremwa says “drug addicts, hooligans & petty criminals,” are beginning to become politically very popular because of the anticipated vacuum in the post-M7 era. He veiledly says People Power is a platform to perpetuate anti-NRM foreign interests, a narrative many Musevenists have been parroting. He implies the best way NRM can rival such groups is by coming up with a clear succession schedule to reassure it’s cadres on the life after M7. Taremwa says he first raised this succession issue in 2011 and was bashed by NRM colleagues who accused him of tilting towards opposition. He implies that if NRM wants to govern for long like CCM in Tanzania & ANC in South Africa, beyond its founder YK Museveni, then it must begin to have the painful discussion on succession because M7 won’t reign forever.
He also says NRM should be inspired by the Ethiopian experience where the ruling group has remained the same even when individual leaders (Prime Ministers) on the top have been changing. He says because of the ambivalence on the succession issue, many would-be potential M7 successors are nervously sitting on the fence. In his latest controversial missive, Taremwa says a list of potential successors should be drawn up & covertly kept somewhere just in case M7 ceases being able to govern. He claims the way a musical crowd recently succeeded in preventing Bebe Cool, a renowned M7 supporter, from performing because of his political views shows the extent to which NRM supporters (who should have stepped forward to defend him) have become demoralized because of lack of clarity on succession.
