Ugandan presidential candidates now plan to seal rigging loopholes

From left, Amama Mbabazi, Yoweri Museveni and, Kizza Besigye. PHOTOS | DAILY MONITOR 

By GAAKI KIGAMBO

In Summary

• ‘Vote protection’ has been drummed up especially by Dr Besigye, who claims that he has been rigged out of all the past three elections.

There have been calls against vote rigging on the presidential campaign trail, but the eagerness by the three major candidates — President Yoweri Museveni, Dr Kizza Besigye and Amama Mbabazi — to protect their votes appears to be a key determinant, notes a new study published in the East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights. 

Vote protection has been drummed up especially by Dr Besigye, the candidate for the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), who claims that he has been rigged out in all the past three elections he has been involved in.

His insistence is backed by two rulings from the Supreme Court on election fraud, a number of election observer reports about the same and more recently, utterances by a high ranking army official who was involved in the 2006 elections.

His party has frequently been faulted for lacking a nationwide network that is present at all the 28,010 polling stations where ballot stuffing reportedly happens.

As if to mitigate this shortcoming, FDC is reportedly organising networks of 10 people, the so-called Power 10 groups, whose many tasks include protecting the party’s votes.

Equally, Mr Mbabazi, a former prime minister and independent candidate, has hinted that he has a plan up his sleeve to guard his votes.

President Museveni, like Mr Mbabazi, has not said how he intends to guard his votes even if he has sounded strong warnings against the opposition — who he said were scheming to rig the polls!

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According to President Museveni, one of the planned ways is to use computers to change the results at the stage of transmission — a veiled dig at Mr Mbabazi who, at one of his campaign rallies, said elections are rigged at the main tallying centres by altering results electronically.

“I do not think the stealing will be so blatant this time round. It seems all the candidates are fearful that their votes will be stolen including President Museveni.

The effect of everyone protecting his votes will be that either we will have a smooth election or it will be outright chaos as everyone tries to ‘protect’ his votes,” said Kasaija Apuuli, the author of Uganda’s 2016 General Elections: Preparations and Implications.

Previous vote protection efforts have spawned clashes such as in the 2011 Kampala mayoral race, which was temporarily suspended after supporters of Erias Lukwago stormed a couple of polling stations where they suspected ballot stuffing was taking place and shut them down.

Mr Kasaija’s study analyses 10 issues that he feels have the potential to affect the outcome of next month’s elections. These are: The state of the economy, the actual management of the elections by the current Electoral Commission, the state of political parties and civil society and failed electoral reforms.

Others are: The continued involvement of security forces and vigilante groups in the electoral process; the creation of new constituencies; the failed opposition alliance; and the international community.