The Electoral Commission has denied extending its road map to accommodate the ruling NRM party.
This comes in the wake of new amendments to the presidential and parliamentary electoral acts that were passed in parliament this week allowing changes to be made to the electoral process including the removal of facilitation of all presidential candidates in addition to the reduction of polling time from 5:00pm to 4:00pm.
The Electoral Commission in response to these amendments was also forced to readjust its road map which will now see presidential aspirants nominated between November 3rd and 4th before hitting the campaign trail from the November 9th to February 10th next year with the elections taking place on the February 12th.
In addition to these changes, the nominations of Members of Parliament have also been moved to the 2nd and 3rd of December with campaigns kicking off after that.
The NRM party on the other hand has still failed to announce a new date for its party primaries after it was forced to cancel the earlier date of September 25.
This delay has been attributed to the ongoing structural and district elections that have seen a lot of controversy with many being reorganized at the party’s electoral commission headquarters in addition to the petitions arising from these elections that are still bogging down the party’s legal committee.
However Jotham Taremwa, the Electoral Commission’s spokesperson has clarified that any changes that have been to the nation electoral commission’s road map have nothing to do with the internal dynamics of the NRM party because their mandate is to implement the changes that have been made to the two acts so as to deliver a free and fair elections to the country.
“This road map is not cast in stone. When these amendments come in, we interpret them in terms of how they are going to impact on our work and what is it that need to be changed. So our response to these amendments has no relationship at all with the internal organization of any party leave alone the NRM”.
NRM party electoral commission Chairperson Dr. Tanga Odoi confirmed that all electoral petitions are in the process of being cleared and they are only waiting for a final report from the legal committee of the commission so as to announce all the results at once.
“We were supposed to receive the final report from the committee but they are still working on a number of issues. So I asked them to sort themselves out before they give us their final report”.
Taremwa also urged all aspirants who have decided to take part in these elections to respect all the rules and regulations that have been put in place by the commission to guide the entire process.
“If you have to participate in elections, follow elections laws, if you don’t want to follow the laws, then go do something else. But don’t criticize the [electoral commission] for doing the right thing and then clap for somebody who is doing the wrong thing”.
