The appointment of Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba as Chief of Defence Forces continues to elicit varying interpretations as to what President Museveni’s move signifies.
Is the president trying to trim the political wings of his son and keep his Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) pressure group at bay? Or is Museveni giving Muhoozi a bigger stage and ingratiating him with the military which has much say on who takes or retains power in Uganda?
One thing that many political analysts agree on is that Muhoozi’s appointment effectively means he can’t stand in the 2026 elections like he had vowed.
“It has cleared the path for his father in 2026 because there was going to be confusion among some NRM supporters. Do we support the son or the father?” argued Dr Albert Kakande, a political analyst based in the United Kingdom.
Kakande argued that by making Muhoozi CDF, Museveni has taken him out of circulation and kept him busy with military activities.
Other political analysts like Timothy Kalyegira concur with Kakande adding that Museveni’s appointment of Muhoozi and the integration of his key lieutenants like Balaam Barugahara and Lillian Aber into cabinet means he has buried PLU for now.
“As I said last week of Gen. Kainerugaba’s Masaka rally, he’s only as powerful as Museveni allows him to be. Faced with serious splits within his family, M7 breaks up the MK Movement by absorbing some of its key hands into his cabinet and tying MK down in the full-time CDF job,” Kalyegira wrote on X.
Yet there are those who think Muhoozi’s appointment as CDF is the clearest sign that he is being prepared to succeed his father.
Wafula Oguttu, a former editor of The Monitor and an opposition activist said the cabinet reshuffle and changes in the UPDF command show that the Muhoozi succession project is on course.
“It is army led. In 2026 it will be 95% done. And 5% on the beaches. Nothing to do with the ordinary citizens’ wish and will,” he wrote on X.
Another, Ivan Kawalya said the presidency is now Muhoozi’s to lose.
“He has given his son everything he has asked for and come 2026 he will be ready to hand over the presidency too. By the way the new cabinet has been redesigned, it’s clear that the son’s hand has influence on it as well,” he wrote.
For long time, the talk about Muhoozi Project has been rife. The son’s recent actions and declarations have added to the speculation that he is readying to replace his father.
He has moved to many parts of the country, trying to size up his support. In the process, several senior NRM officials have warmed up wanting to be in his good books should he succeed his father.
Very guarded
Yet Museveni has, for now, played the succession card too close to his chest.
In numerous media interviews, he has dismissed talk that he is preparing his son to take over from him. He has argued that whoever replaces him will be elected by the NRM and follow the stipulated laws.
Dr Kizza Besigye and other politicians who have worked closely with Museveni have always warned that one of his biggest strengths is being unpredictable.
In 2004, Museveni told a group of catholic leaders in a meeting at Rwakitura that Prof Gilbert Bukenya was presidential material. Bukenya, upon hearing the news started behaving like a president-in-waiting. Museveni eventually cut him to size and dropped him from cabinet after the 2011 elections. Today Bukenya is a senior presidential advisor on the Environment.
Former prime minister Patrick Amama Mbabazi, too, thought that the president had blessed him and started mobilizing clandestinely for the presidency. Museveni sacked him from cabinet, stripped him of his post as NRM secretary general, closed down his bank and ran him bankrupt. Today Mbabazi is contented to be Museveni’s special envoy.
With Muhoozi, the ball is still in the air.
But there are some who think that the final blow to the Muhoozi project was the controversial lifting of the presidential age-limit in December 2017.
Museveni, the say, realized that the son was not ready for the role or did not have the credentials to replace him. He therefore decided to stick around.
During last presidential campaigns, Gen Salim Saleh, the president’s younger brother, told a group of NRM mobilisers who had called on him at his Kapeka base that: “As long as my brother [Museveni] still breathes, he will want to be the president of Uganda.”
No one, Saleh added, even Muhoozi, would stand in his way.
Question is: When he stops breathing who will replace him?
