By Hakim Kyeswa
As the National Resistance Movement (NRM) marks four decades at the helm of Uganda’s political journey, its story cannot be told solely through the lens of longevity in power. It is equally a story of adaptation, recovery, and regional reawakening. Few chapters illustrate this better than the party’s recent resurgence in Buganda a region long regarded as Uganda’s political and economic heartbeat.
For years, Buganda presented a complex paradox for the ruling party. While the NRM retained national dominance after the return of multi-party politics in 2006, the region steadily slipped from its grasp. That drift reached a dramatic climax in the 2021 general elections, when an opposition wave swept through Buganda, capturing the majority of parliamentary seats and slashing President Museveni’s vote share in the region to a sobering 25 per cent. For many within the Movement, it felt like a political verdict had been delivered Buganda was lost.
The aftermath was marked by uncertainty and quiet despair. Even robust government interventions such as the Parish Development Model (PDM) struggled to translate into political capital in a region with dense populations and intense political competition. Infrastructure development alone could not counter the deeper undercurrents of youth unemployment, political alienation, and internal party fractures. The road back looked steep, if not impassable.
It is within this context that the understated but consequential role of Hon. Haruna Kasolo emerges. Elected NRM Vice Chairperson for Buganda during the party’s 2025 internal polls, Kasolo did not arrive with fanfare or fiery rhetoric. To some observers, his low-profile, behind-the-scenes style was mistaken for weakness. Yet politics, like strategy, often rewards those who speak less and listen more.
Kasolo’s first intervention was diagnostic rather than theatrical. He identified one of the NRM’s most damaging self-inflicted wounds in 2021: internal disunity. Aggrieved primary losers had defected to independent candidacies, fragmenting the vote and handing victory to the opposition. Healing this fracture required patience, trust, and credibility. Kasolo embarked on a painstaking reconciliation drive, engaging disgruntled party members one by one, appealing to shared history and collective destiny rather than coercion. Many returned. Others stood down. The bleeding stopped.
Equally critical was his attention to the electoral environment itself. Kasolo recognised that fear and intimidation at polling stations had undermined confidence in the democratic process. Working quietly with security agencies, he pushed for a polling-day atmosphere where voters could exercise their right freely and candidates could compete without intimidation. Democracy, after all, cannot thrive where fear resides.
He also confronted the material realities of campaigning in Buganda. Elections in the region are costly, media-driven, and logistically demanding. Candidates repeatedly raised concerns over inadequate resources posters, public address systems, polling agents basic tools without which campaigns collapse. Kasolo took the case to party leadership and successfully lobbied for a special campaign support fund for Buganda, a form of affirmative action that allowed NRM candidates to compete on more equal footing.
The results of this quiet, methodical strategy are now evident. In the 2026 elections, the NRM reclaimed 55 parliamentary seats in Buganda, surpassing the opposition’s 41, with several winning independents aligning themselves with the Movement. Most symbolically, President Museveni’s vote share rose from 25 per cent to 45 per cent a significant political recovery in a region once written off.
Such outcomes are never the work of one individual alone. Kasolo himself has consistently credited candidates, grassroots mobilisers, and voters for the turnaround. Yet leadership is often about creating conditions for others to succeed. In that regard, he was the indispensable catalyst the convener, reconciler, and strategist who turned fragmentation into unity and despair into momentum.
As the NRM reflects on its 40-year journey, it is worth recognising not only its towering figures but also its quiet builders the men and women who repair foundations rather than polish rooftops. In Buganda, Hon. Haruna Kasolo has played that role with patience and resolve. By listening more than he spoke, uniting where others divided, and empowering rather than commanding, he helped reclaim a political stronghold many believed was gone for good.
In politics, as in life, progress is not always loud or swift. Sometimes, it is steady and deliberate. And sometimes, that is what makes it last.
The writer is an NRM cadre.
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