Museveni Invokes Biblical Parable to Settle NRM Membership Debate, Affirms Equality for All
KAMPALA – President Yoweri Museveni has decisively addressed a lingering internal debate within the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) regarding the status of long-serving versus new members, using a biblical parable to reinforce the party’s principle of absolute equality.
The issue, which resurfaced during the recent National Executive Conference (NEC) in Kololo and was raised by Rt. Hon. Rebecca Kadaga, centered on whether longevity of membership should confer special status or privilege within the party.
In his response, President Museveni drew a direct parallel to the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard from the Book of Matthew. He recounted the story where a landowner pays laborers who started work at different times of the day—some at dawn and others as late as the eleventh hour—the same wage of one denarius. When the all-day workers protested, the landowner defended his generosity, stating, “So the last will be first, and the first last.”
Applying this lesson to the NRM, Museveni stated that creating a hierarchy would be “insulting and repulsive,” adding, “How can you treat people who come to reinforce you as if they are squatters?”
He anchored this position in the NRM’s core ideology, which is built on four principles: patriotism, Pan-Africanism, socio-economic transformation, and democracy—a politics of interests rather than identity.
The President advised that senior members should secure their relevance through service, not seniority. He urged them to focus on “Kukyenuura”—a term for solving people’s problems through government programs like the Parish Development Model (PDM) and Emyooga—asserting that this would make it impossible for newcomers to outshine them.
This ideological message was delivered against the backdrop of a highly successful membership audit launched in May 2025, which has verified over 20 million NRM members, 18.5 million of whom are of voting age, underscoring the party’s broad-based appeal to both old and new members alike.
