Uganda’s runaway vote price inflation has economists baffled

As the Uganda shilling continues to depreciate against the world’s major currencies, the Ugandan vote is appreciating at a very encouraging rate.

The average price of a vote has climbed steadily from ten US cents 15 years ago to over $30 today.

In 1996, one MP in eastern Uganda decided not to seek re-election in protest against his constituents who had been selling their vote for two hundred shillings in the presidential election.

That was the time when the presidential election was held well ahead of the parliamentary ones.

The man said he could not continue representing people who held themselves in such low esteem, and threw in the towel.

That was then. Today the market price of the Ugandan vote seems to be in favour of the voter.

Things are much better than during the 2001 and 2006 general elections.

In 2001, instead of paying heavily for votes, you could reduce the votes of your candidate’s opponent by killing off some of his voters.

The more subtle methods used could include driving an army truck through a crowd of his supporters.

In 2006, things could get a bit more direct and you could fire a sub-machinegun into a crowd of the supporters of your candidate’s rival in broad daylight in the capital city.

But come 2011, things have become more humane and it is market forces that are determining the direction of flow of votes.

Some claim it is a foreign power that has put pressure on the key players to use any means to acquire votes apart from violence.

It is claimed that the foreign power does not want a key ally that is policing Somalia to be faced with an Egypt or Tunisia situation. So the commercial demand for votes became acute.

The supply of the votes is elastic within limits. As Ugandans went to the polls last week, the Electoral Commission maintained there were 13.9 million voters on the register.

But any sane analysis of statistics from Uganda Bureau of Statistics shows that there cannot be more than 10.4 million Ugandans aged 18 and above.