By Kato Jamil
Celebrations erupted across parts of Mbarara District yesterday after the National Unity Platform (NUP) suffered what political observers are now calling one of its most humiliating defeats since the party’s formation, following a disastrously poorly attended campaign rally that laid bare the opposition’s shrinking influence in the NRM stronghold.
The rally, addressed by NUP president Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, ended up in Rubindi Town, but sources reveal this was never his original plan. Kyagulanyi had initially intended to anchor his main rally at Bwizibwera Market, banking on the usual hustle and bustle of market-day crowds to artificially boost numbers and optics.
However, district leaders and security officials flatly rejected the plan, insisting that politics must not disrupt business and livelihoods. Kyagulanyi was ordered to relocate his rally to Rubindi and allow vendors in Bwizibwera to carry on with their work uninterrupted.
The directive was met with open relief and celebration among market vendors, who had earlier expressed fears that Bobi Wine’s arrival often accompanied, they said, by disorderly groups, would paralyse trade. Many vendors were heard praising authorities for protecting their businesses and keeping politics away from the market, some actually went far by drinking and dancing as Bobi Wine’s group left.
Panic Sets In
The forced relocation to Rubindi reportedly sent Kyagulanyi into panic mode. By this time, he was already aware that ground support in Mbarara was dangerously thin, which explains why he had sought refuge in a crowded market setting.
Sources close to the NUP camp say Kyagulanyi immediately began making frantic phone calls to his coordinator, Bright Muhumuza, urging him and other mobilisers to quickly pull crowds to Rubindi. It was during these calls that he received crushing news: the ground had already been neutralised.
The man behind that political shutdown, sources revealed, was none other than Prosper Tuhaise Kururagire, the NRM District Chairperson for Mbarara and one of the ruling party’s most effective grassroots tacticians.
For days before the rally, Tuhaise had quietly but methodically engaged youth groups and community influencers across Rubindi, Bubaare, Bukiro, Kashare, Kagongi, and Rubaya. His message was simple but potent reject politics of confrontation and embrace development, stability, and opportunity under the NRM.
By the time Kyagulanyi’s calls were going out, the youth base NUP traditionally depends on had already been demobilised and politically redirected.
Last-Minute Desperation
Kyagulanyi later reached out to Muhumuza, who advised him to proceed and address whatever numbers would be available on the ground. Despite last-ditch efforts, mobilisation failed, and Rubindi greeted the NUP leader with what insiders described as the smallest audience the party has ever addressed.
Excluding security operatives and party officials, local residents who turned up did not exceed 80 people, a figure that shocked even seasoned opposition figures.
Images and video clips seen by this publication show scattered listeners standing in small clusters as Kyagulanyi attempted to sell his message of protest vote and change.
Yellow Ground, Red Rejected
Meanwhile, a separate standoff unfolded as NUP organisers attempted to convince boda boda riders and taxi operators to support or facilitate the rally. The transporters reportedly pushed back firmly, declaring that Mbarara was “NRM yellow, not red.”
In a striking show of political maturity and calculation, Prosper Tuhaise and other NRM leaders stepped in, not to block the rally, but to allow it to proceed.
According to Tuhaise, preventing Kyagulanyi from campaigning would have handed him unnecessary sympathy and relevance. Instead, allowing him to proceed to an empty venue exposed the true state of his support.
Prosper’s Political Chess Move
Videos recorded on the eve of the rally show Tuhaise addressing massive gatherings, openly campaigning for President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and urging Ugandans to reward him another term for decades of stability, infrastructure development, and economic progress.
In the same footage, youths are seen receiving NRM materials, including yellow T-shirts, with some publicly renouncing opposition politics and accusing NUP of exploiting young people’s frustrations without offering real solutions.
Tuhaise’s influence extends beyond mobilisation. He has personally invested in strengthening the party’s presence in the district, including constructing a modern NRM office in Mbarara using his own resources—an act widely cited as proof of deep loyalty and ideological commitment.
Described by colleagues as a “magical mobiliser,” Prosper Tuhaise Kururagire has once again demonstrated that political success is determined long before rally day—through planning, persuasion, and grassroots engagement.
Under his stewardship, Mbarara has now gone on record as the district where NUP and Bobi Wine registered their most embarrassing rally turnout, while NRM supporters and ordinary citizens alike celebrated the triumph of organisation over theatrics.
For many observers, the Mbarara episode was not just a rally gone wrong, it was a political lesson authored by Prosper Tuhaise.