Uganda’s ruling party has endorsed President Yoweri Museveni as its candidate in 2021 elections.
According to local media, NRM made the resolution on Tuesday afternoon during a five day retreat of CEC at Chobe Safari Lodge in Nwoya district.
The National Resistance Movement called for Museveni to ‘continue leading the movement and the state in 2021 and beyond to eliminate bottlenecks to transformation.’
This means that Museveni who has been president since 1986 will now contest for a sixth term in office. He will be 76 years old in 2021.
Museveni controversially won the last election with 60.75 percent of the votes with his closest rival Kizza Besigye getting 35 per cent.
In the 2016 presidential elections, the party endorsed Museveni as the sole presidential candidate after Amama Mbabazi, the then party secretary general expressed interest in contesting against Museveni. Mbabazi was subsequently forced out the party.
“To emphatically recommend to the membership of the movement and its organs that His Excellency Yoweri Museveni our leader and General of the African Resistance, continues leading the Movement and the State in 2021 and beyond- as we eliminate the bottlenecks to transformation,” reads part of the statement.
Mulindwa notes that the party’s top organ also made several directives to government for urgent changes among, which are to expeditiously study the multiple requirements of operationalizing the parish model and proceed with implementation without delay.
The model is envisaged to help transform 68 per cent households that are still involved in substance farming.
“The party directs the government to significantly recapitalize the Uganda Development Bank (UDB) in the new financial year, to enable the bank to play a more vigorous and central role in providing affordable credit for transformative effort,” further reads the statement.
Mulindwa says that the re-capitalization of UDB shall include relocating the Agricultural Credit Facility from Bank of Uganda to UDB.
CEC also directed government to urgently revisit the legal and administrative regime for environmental conservation, as part of a fundamental push to roll back and mitigate the effects of climate change.