In the concluded elections in Uganda, the elections were considered peaceful and in one way or the other they were considered by various election observers as free and fair. Observers which include African Union, East Africa Community, IGAD and others considered the elections free fair unlike European Union who said that there were some irregularities in the process. But whether free and fair or peaceful there are something that happened which can even make you hate the results that came out. Some things were ignored while others went unnoticed but we have tried to collect some remarkable dirty things that were not worth happening in the national elections considered to be free and fair.
1. All way at the start of the campaigns, Uganda police did a lot in stopping Mbabazi from holding consultative meeting, during rally campaigns, Boda Bodas could be paid by the NRM team not to attend the Go forward rallies which weakened the Go Forward team making the candidate remain with only 1.43% at the end of the polls.
2. The leading opposition candidate Kizza Besigye was interfered with, various times before the Election Day. On the most popular sceneries were When Besigye was at Igorora trading centre in Ibanda district, when he tried to visit the Internally Displaced Persons camp in Eastern Uganda and on 15th Feb 2016 just 3 days to the elections when he was denied entry to Kampala Central and detained entry thereafter.
3. On the polling day, electoral materials arrived late in districts which are around the electoral commission headquarters when actually in far districts the election started as early as 7AM. In Gulu voting started earlier while in Mbarara municipality some polling stations started around 10AM while in Kampala and Wakiso most polling station started voting at around 1PM while others extended to 4PM. These two districts in addition to Rukungiri Districts were the major strongholds of the opposition.
4. 36 Polling Stations voted the following day when provisional results were being given out by the electoral commission. That was something that was so discouraging to the voters since the provisional results were already showing the probable winner. These polling stations were from Kampala and Wakiso.
5. 2 Polling stations did not vote! These polling stations are in Kampala. They were therefore denied a chance to vote by the electoral commission. They did not decide for their country. And will have to wait till 2021 to decide for the country.
6. In Kiruhura District, the home district of the incumbent, people did not vote for the president. In most polling stations like in Nswere, Kanyaryeru, Kanyaanya, Nyakasharara and other areas of Kiruhura, people would verify with their thumb prints and get ticked in the voters register only to receive a ballot paper which is already ticked with one presidential candidate just waiting to be inserted in box.
7. At some polling stations in Kiruhura, more votes were counted than the official registered voters in those polling stations. At one polling station in Rushere trading centre, Kizza Besigye had 02 votes while Yoweri Kaguta Museveni had over 700 votes when actually the polling station has a figure around 468 registered voters.
8. FDC and Go Forward agents have been claiming being chased away from polling stations and tallying centres however no polling station have been specified where these agents were chased from. But in Ugandan elections, everything is possible.
9. On the polling day Mobile money services and social media were banned in Uganda something that has confused not only Ugandans but also the international community as to why it was done so.
10. When the provisional results were being announced, the Electoral commission started with announcing the results from incumbent’s strongholds. Kotido, Moroto, Kumi and Kitgum were the first districts to have full results announced which were over 80% incumbent’s votes.
11. Electoral commission stopped all media houses that were operating private tally centres saying that it is against the law and some Televisions stations such as NBS Television which had designed a strong tally system showing the stand of candidates with bar graphs and piecharts plus district maps was forced to be discontinued and no one else was allowed to tally besides the electoral commission.
12. Over 1738 polling stations did not submit their electoral results and they were not tallied in the total votes. According to the electoral commission Chairman he said that even if these were considered they would not change the results. The winner would still remain the winner. Among these polling stations, 388 Polling stations from Jinja District, 162 Polling stations from Kampala, 14 from Kasese, 119 from Wakiso, 273 in Rukungiri the home district of Kizza Besigye 190 from Kabale all these are the strongholds of the opposition. Even if they would not change the electoral results as the Chairman Electoral commission claimed, but they would have lowered the winning percentage of the incumbent something that would have helped the opposition determine their stand in the eyes of voting Ugandans. And even if those polling stations were in favor of the incumbent, but they would have been tallied and included in the final results so that the opposition does not fall into bias.
13. Other cases have been reported including the claim by Dr. Kizza Besigye that vote were being rigged in Naguru, some saying that electoral commission was announcing the results not similar to those from the district tally centres, and many others but we included only those which we had witnessed and we were sure that they had happened and were witnessed by just more than our team.
We would therefore like to challenge the IGAD, AU, EAC who said that the election was free and fair, Ugandans are still not sure which elections did you observe. There were irregularities which were too much clear especially the late delivery of election materials. The only message Ugandans need is to convince them that the unfairness that was involved was not too much to influence the results things would have kept the same even under normal circumstances.
We would like to request Ugandans to be calm in this period and the ones who are not satisfied with the electoral results to take the court decision since some evidence will be there to justify their claims. We condemn violence let’s use peaceful means.
13 Ugly things that happened during Uganda 2016 elections
