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Ugandan presidential candidates now plan to seal rigging loopholes

Saturday January 30 2016
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From left, Amama Mbabazi, Yoweri Museveni and, Kizza Besigye. PHOTOS | DAILY MONITOR

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.

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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!

READ: Besigye creeping up on Museveni in swing districts in the east

ALSO READ: Poll retains Museveni in first place, rivals gain

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.

President Museveni, in power for three decades now, is guarded by the elite Special Forces — a fully-fledged and well equipped unit with the strength of a military division — who are commanded by his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba. A military division comprises 10,000-18,000 soldiers, according to military deployment guidelines.

Other than Besigye’s criticism in November last year that the Special Forces cost a lot of resources while many citizens wallow in poverty, they have not featured much in the campaigns.

They, however, are understood to be deeply involved in drawing up strategies and plans to secure the election and its aftermath.

But the army in general has been at the centre of the ongoing presidential contest. It has for instance manned the national identification registration system from which the electoral commission extracted the bulk of the voters’ register.

According to the Human Rights Network Uganda (Hurinet), they “continues to play a background role in influencing electorates to vote for a particular candidate” mainly through the so-called Operation Wealth Creation —a government initiative to supply crop seedlings.

In January last year, President Museveni vowed not leave power because he had majority support in the army — a point he has stressed a number of times on the campaign trail.

But both Dr Besigye and Mr Mbabazi dismissed his claims. According to them, not only do they have strong support in in the army too, the majority of officers are interested in witnessing a peaceful transition of power.

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