Team Thorough: Group that dismantled Mbabazi’s structures returns to canvas votes for Museveni

In June 2015, the hitherto powerful super minister, and former Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi announced his bid to oust his former boss, President Museveni in the 2016 elections.

Mbabazi hoped to use his clandestinely built structures of NRM members from village to national level which was to canvas votes for him.

Fast forward, in November 2015, a press conference was organized in Bugolobi, a group which claimed to have been the brain been Mbabazi’s structures denounced him after being lured by Museveni.

It regrouped under the name “Team Thorough YKM.”

The group started on a mission to dismantle structures that the former Prime Minister had always boasted of, on top of luring members on Mbabazi’s team to start working with Museveni.

It was therefore not surprising that Mbabazi, who had earlier boosted of being the strongest opponent to Museveni, got only 1.39% of the total votes in 2016 .

This can partly be attributed to the role played by Team Thorough YKM.

However, according to the group’s national coordinator, Kiiza Idiri Kamuntu they have again been given the task to mobilise support for the incumbent in the forthcoming general election.

“We mobilized and protected votes in the last 2016 elections. We are doing it again by setting up structures at all levels,”Kiiza said at a press conference on Sunday.

“We are engaged in trying to convert politicians from other political parties and we are progressing well. We have so far seen over 20,000 opposition supporters defect to NRM.”

He noted that most converts are from the Forum for Democratic Change.

Structure

According to Kiiza, the group has over five million mobilisers throughout the country starting from villages, parishes, sub-counties, constituencies, district, sub –region, region and national levels.

“We have 20 members per village that we call foot soldiers who will move door to door to canvass for NRM votes. We think with these structures, defections we have had and more to come plus the engagements we are doing, President Museveni will have a bigger percentage of the votes than in the previous elections.”

“We are involving NRM chairpersons at LC1 and their committees to help us in mobilization.”

Asked what the main challenges for Museveni are, Kiiza said youth unemployment is still a big problem as the incumbent goes into the forthcoming polls.

On Bobi Wine, he said they are not worried about the Kyadondo East MP and his National Unity Platform since his party is mainly in cities and town centres.

“He is only based in towns and some municipalities but we have some strategies to curb him. We know there have been challenges of youth employment but we are addressing it. As a strategy, we are engaging youths to show them something tangible but also disseminate information on NRM achievements,”Kiiza said.

“We tell them that changing the president is not the solution to Uganda’s problems. We ask them(youths) to appreciate the facts that the period between 1978 and 1985, Uganda changed many presidents but didn’t get anything from the changes.”

He noted that they will continue dismantling Bobi Wine’s structures and other opposition political parties as a way of ensuring Museveni reclaims power in the forthcoming polls.

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