Mbabazi Daughter's Fury Over Controversial Poll

The controversial poll, carried out by Research World International in Kampala, further indicated that First Lady Janet Museveni and Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga were the most popular female politicians in Uganda whom many prefer to succeed Museveni.

Observers say the findings, either by design or default, portrayed Amama Mbabazi as very unpopular despite widely held views he was next to Museveni in the succession queue.

Nina now argues that RWI director Dr. Wakida is an FDC loyalist thus lacking the impartiality urgently needed to conduct an objective poll.

“It didn’t escape me that Dr Wakida and the others in the team are alleged members of FDC,” Nina wrote on Monday in response to an article published by influential blogger Drew Dembe.

“One of the members of the survey team was sending SMSs for people to attend the press conference. That one stood on FDC ticket in the last parliamentary elections. All of this notwithstanding, the beauty of this survey is that it lets you into the mind of the funder,” said Nina.

It’s feared Nina was insinuating that Col. Kizza Besigye could have funded the opinion poll with the ultimate aim of triggering power struggles in the ruling party.

In this philosophical piece, Nina quotes military scholars to justify her views.

Read on:

Dear Drew

It has been long since I wrote to you and responded to your letters. Forgive me but I have been using the power of observation to see what is going on, plus the fact that maternal duty calls of course. Now though you wrote about the fattened bull and the ticks and all of this coming at this particular time,…hmmn, is there something you know and you are not sharing?

Anyway, I finally got my Hercule Poirot moment. All it took was for me to watch the Agatha Christie “Murder on the Orient Express” and there it was, the answer has all along been in front of us.

So I went and did the mathematics and thought, wow, so someone has learnt to use the Art of War and 48 laws of power by Robert Greene in politics?

I am talking about the survey. Whoever did it knew the audience they were targeting. Not you and me of course.

For us, we just sit ringside with our popcorn and watch. But like I mentioned earlier, there are clues that have been left in the survey to show who it is.

The first clue was in the timing. The Observer gave us the most insight into this and I found out later it was because they knew something that we didn’t know.

This survey was indeed carried out in two parts. In October last year at the height of the oil debate, six months into Walk to Work and the second part around end March beginning of April as alleged by the firm.

The primary purpose of the survey was to find out the effectiveness of walk to work and understand how people felt about some key issues that were disturbing the funder.

It didn’t escape me that Dr Wakida and the others in the team are alleged members of FDC.

One of the members of the survey team was sending SMSs for people to attend the press conference. That one stood on FDC ticket in the last parliamentary elections. All of this notwithstanding, the beauty of this survey is that it lets you into the mind of the funder.

The second clue was with the mathematics of population ratios. The third law of power is to conceal ones intentions.

Robert Green says “It will be infinitely easier for your enemies to thwart your plans when they know what you're up to. So plant fake clues, cover your scent with red herrings, hide your motives with false sincerity and you will have them exactly where you want them to be and in the end achieve your goals.”

Remember I questioned why the population ratio used was done in such a way to make us believe that it was biased towards eastern Uganda.

In fact, what I showed is that Western Uganda had been under represented by about 4% while Kampala, Central, Northern and Eastern had all been over represented.

This looks small to you, but it becomes significant later if you are trying to work on the minds of targeted people.

Having said that, this (population spread) I am afraid is a red herring to make you believe that it was sponsored by someone from the Eastern region of Uganda.

Anyway, so I asked who is trying to conceal themselves with misdirection? Many names came up.

 LOCATION

The next clue was the building where this firm is located. I asked, why Naalya? So I made a few phone calls to my friends living in Naalya and they got back to me later.

They told me that it belonged to a certain Engineer from Kisoro whose son works in an important office, but and that is a big BUT, it was rented 2-3 months ago.

Six months after the survey was done. What was the purpose of this? More misdirection?

My deviant mind draws me to the conclusion that it was an attempt to dangle a carrot in front of the eyes of whoever the end consumer would be and they hoped by locating in that building, the survey would find a way of “leaking” before the official release.  

The 6th Law of power says, that you must court attention at all cost, everything is judged by appearance.

So the question is whose attention were they courting and then validating the survey by officially releasing it? The answer lies in the questions.

Demographics

There were 4 questions in demographics. Not out of the ordinary you will say. There were additionally 10 questions in the political section;

The economy got 5 questions; Political party performance got 8 questions; Civil and Public Action (Walk to Work) got 2 questions; the Party association and loyalty got 7 questions while Elections and future views got 5 questions.

It is obvious from the above that politics was the main motive for the survey but judging by how people respond to surveys, it seems unlikely that anyone would answer 41 questions in one go. It just doesn’t happen.

At best this survey was divided into two so that people had 20-21 questions to answer. Because we don’t know the order, we can’t pair the two surveys. It remains a theory until we can prove otherwise.

For now though I believe they were divided in two and after the first set of questions, the person hatched a plan and went out and asked specific questions.

This would explain the story that I heard through the grapevine about one of the team leaders who went to a specific region and never left his hotel, but instead ticked everything himself.

He knew the kind of answers his bosses wanted from him as those questions were leading. They were targeting NRM internal dynamics.

The first set of questions that were asked wanted to know the effect of walk to work and to understand which political parties people belonged to. They got a resounding 60.3% for NRM and 30.4% for FDC. They also got the information that if people were to vote today, they would mostly vote the same way.

Gen. Sun Tzu 

So with the first survey showing that walk to work was not helping increase public support and that NRM is still strong, what would you think the funders options would be?

General Sun Tzu says here; “According as circumstances are favorable, one should modify one’s plans. All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy.  Feign disorder, and crush him”

In my opinion, a plan was hatched to destroy NRM. How do you crush a strong force? You scatter it. This is how comes the question of succession becomes relevant especially how the questions were framed.

For starters you realize that the media is intimating that NRM candidate will not change so how do you scatter the candidate?

Find their point of weakness and enter. If the Commander is too fortified, find the lower commanders and entice them with glory.

But do it in such a way to ensure that 60.3% breaks up into small units that will be below your 30.4%. Is it doable? According to the survey, you can manage it. Let us look at that question again.

It is interesting that the first question in Political party performance is about the NRM party leadership and this is because the funder believes that whoever holds the Chairmanship to the party becomes the Presidential candidate as history has so far shown and that is who they will have to ultimately compete against.

Between the top 5 contenders they hold 71% of the votes. Significant to note is that those who are not interested or don’t know allegedly make up 17.5% (another red herring). So let us break this down into numbers. It would mean that the top person only commands 19% of the NRM voters and the bottom person 10%. All these are significantly below 30.4%.

But when the greedy lower commanders get the information, they will look at consolidating, alliances and such political drama. They will also look at destroying their perceived competition. I think so far, we have not been let down by the trend in the media?

 FUNDERS

It is clear that the funders only strategy would be to ensure NRM breaks up into minute factions and to accelerate the break up.

This brings me back to why the survey was released at this time. What is it that the funder has realized today that he did not know in October? Could something in NRM have indicated that perhaps it is ripe for break-up?

So with all of this in mind, the funder of this survey became determined to accelerate the break-up knowing that perhaps if he pitted all NRM leaders against each other, they would all go for each other’s throats because they would mistakenly believe that the party is the key while the survey question of decision influencer shows that party affiliation is not key, but the key is ability to bring development.

 While most people associate with NRM, their decisions would depend on what development the leaders bring.

This explains why NRM has 74% MPs in the house and how each of these influences how the electorate votes because they spend their five years bringing all sorts of development programs to their electorate.

If NRM does nothing on the grassroots, it will have an equal impact on the performance of the Presidential candidate. So keep NRM members pre-occupied fighting each other so that they ignore their constituencies. Meanwhile re-invent yourself as a man of the people, eat with them, become their leader and friend. Sun Tzu says “Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

Wasn’t it Hussein Kashillingi whose status update said, when a woman tells you she is bad, believe her. Don’t argue. How can we argue with what this survey is showing us? Should we not just believe what the mind of the funder has revealed?