Engineer Badru Kiggundu, the chairman of the Electoral Commission has assured Ugandans of a free, fair and credible 2016 general elections.
Kiggundu said they have procured the bio-metric voter verification system [BVVS] where data for the entire district will be placed in every polling station to detect those who would try to vote more than once.
“We shall have the data for the whole district entered into these machines and those who will attempt to vote twice shall be identified, arrested and prosecuted. We shall ensure that the winner is declared because I love all of you,” Kiggundu said.
He rubbished claims from some opposition leaders that he is biased and favours the incumbent and that he has been declaring wrong results in the previous elections, saying such people who spread such information lack the knowledge of the electoral laws.
Kiggundu made the remarks on Friday during the one-day National consultative forum for political parties and political organisations held at Rock Classic Hotel in Tororo. The theme of the meeting was “Nurturing political tolerance for peaceful elections”, and was attended by over 200 participants drawn from Bukedi sub-region.
He advised all the candidates to ensure that they deploy their agents at the polling stations to guard their votes and give them the declaration forms. He warned the candidates against self-declarations because the commission may be compelled to nullify elections of a particular polling station arising from any irregularities detected.
Kiggundu equally condemned forms of electoral violence being engineered by particular candidates, saying it is every individual’s role to make the electoral process very peaceful.
He challenged parents to discourage their children from being used to cause public disorder, violence and chaos, adding that those politicians who put them at the fore front of violence will not stand in for them once they fall into trouble.
What you need to know is that every competition will always have one person emerging as a winner. Therefore, losers should not offload their weaknesses to the Electoral Commission.
The participants accused the commission of being bent to one particular candidate and expressed doubts if it will dare to declare any other candidate a part from the sitting head of state.
Amanya Mushega, the chairperson of the national consultative forum, described the current Electoral Commission as a one man’s project aimed at mocking Ugandans as they waste time in elections and at the end; they declare their own candidates as a reward.
Mushega condemned the ongoing recruitment of crime preventers, saying that it’s a manifestation that the 2016 general elections will have a lot of intimidation where voters will be forced to vote for a particular candidate.
Mushega said if the so called crime preventers were meant to be neutral then they would be dressed in a neutral colour.
The participants demanded the immediate disbandment of crime preventers, saying they had become a nuisance during this electoral process and their recruitment timing was wrong.
Joseph Okadapao from Iteso cultural Union and Ojwang Obbo, the Tororo District UPC chairperson, described crime preventers as crime promoters recruited at the election time to take advantage of the ignorance of the population on the existing laws to cause impunity and rig elections in favour of the incumbent.
Rev. George Okiror Etiang, the secretary of Uganda Joint Christian Council condemned the uncivilised manner in which the Police is handling the citizens, saying it’s casting the country in bad light.
The Police commissioner, Haruna Isabirye who represented the Inspector General of Police appealed to citizens to look at the crime preventers from a positive angle, adding that their recruitment will continue even after election period.
He, however, down played the concern of crime preventers wearing yellow T-shirts, saying there were no donors who volunteered to give T-shirts to crime preventers.
