Published on 08/09/2025
The newly elected NRM Vice Chairperson for Central Region, Hon. Haruna Kasolo Kyeyune, has called for urgent reforms in the ruling party’s constitution that will ensure that regional Vice Chairpersons are elected exclusively by delegates from their respective regions.
Hon Kasolo, who earned the position during last month’s NRM CEC elections, argues that the current system, which allows candidates to be voted by NRM delegates from across all regions, undermines the will of members in specific regions and makes campaigns unnecessarily expensive.
“How can leaders from West Nile want to decide who becomes Vice Chairperson for Central? They already have their own Vice Chairperson elected by all of us at Kololo. This interference is both unnecessary and provocative,” Kasolo, who is also State Minister for Microfinance, emphasized during a recent appearance at the NRM headquarters in Kampala.
The Minister’s remarks followed the decision by businessman Moses Kaliisa Karangwa to withdraw his petition challenging his election as NRM Vice Chairperson for Buganda. Karangwa, the 1st runner-up to Kasolo in the CEC race, had filed before the NRM election appeals tribunal, insisting that the declared victory was illegitimate.
He [Karangwa], however, announced on Saturday, September 06, that he was abandoning the petition, admitting that he had failed to produce compelling evidence to sustain his case.
Kasolo and his lawyer, Mukasa Mbidde, welcomed the concession and described it as an endorsement of his leadership. He said the development paves the way for renewed unity in Buganda, but stressed that lasting peace in the party requires structural reforms.
“Now that this is behind us, we must focus on mobilising Buganda to deliver victory for President Museveni and all NRM candidates. But more importantly, we must change this system to let Buganda delegates decide Buganda’s leaders, just as West Nile or any other region decides theirs,” Kasolo told reporters.
Lawyer Mukasa Mbidde praised Karangwa’s withdrawal as both wise and inevitable, noting that the petition was “incurably defective and unsupported by evidence.”
Party insiders believe Kasolo’s strengthened mandate now positions him to consolidate support in Buganda, a region that overwhelmingly voted for the opposition in 2021, and to push for internal reforms that could reshape how the NRM manages regional leadership contests.
The NRM Secretariat, the administrative arm of the ruling party, was yet to comment on the constitutional reforms fronted by Kasolo at the time of filing this story.
