UGANDA: WHY MUSEVENI SUBMITTED 5M NOMINATION SIGNATURES (photos)

 

By CHANGE OFGUARDS

The Presidential Elections Act 2005 requires a presidential candidate to collect and submit a minimum of 100 signatures of registered voters from 2/3 of all the districts of Uganda. With Uganda's 142 districts, one would have to expect a presidential candidate to gather not more than 142,000 signatures for secondment. Instead, Museveni has submitted over 5m signatures to the EC for verification before his nomination. His Secretariat even had to apologize to all his other supporters who missed appending their signatures. By doing so, he is trying to prove that he is, his NRM and his candidature very popular. He is trying to prove that his NRM is a mass party that is embraced by the majority of Ugandans. During the February 2016 General Elections, he was allotted 5,971,872 votes of the 10,329,131 votes cast out of the 15,279,198 registered voters. With the 19m registered voters for the impending early 2021 general elections, he is psychologically preparing Ugandans for another round of a landslide victory.  

It in the same regard that he decreed that his party primaries for other elective positions were to be conducted by lining up behind the candidates. After realising that the turn up would be embarrassingly low, on the eve of the polling day he decreed that all members who did not appear on his party register were to be allowed to vote. His September 3rd last minute decree opened the floodgates of the massive rigging that was characterised by ferrying of voters, multiple voting, voter bribery and violence. The underage and opposition leaning youth, more especially those from the People Power platform, were visibly active in the polls. Despite the crystal clear sham September 4th polls, on September 5th he took to social media to congratulate the 'successful' exercise;

       "Greetings and congratulations on the massive turn-out."

Some few of his cohorts have come out to out-rightly blame his last minute intervention for the mess that ensued while the majority are too shy to speak out. No wonder his Electoral Commission is grappling with 516 petitions that arose out of his arbitrary last minute decree. It is in this same regard that he was sued in his capacity as the chairperson of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party for allegedly being responsible for the chaotic party primaries. The petitioner, Mr Jackson Ntwatwa, who filed the suit in the High Court stated that the directive by Museveni a few days to the primaries, to allow unregistered party members to vote contravened the NRM constitution.

       "A declaration that the directive of the 1st respondent (President Museveni) to allow all persons with a national ID to vote in the party primaries even if not a registered member, was illegal and contrary to the constitution of the National Resistance Movement."

His petition joined Museveni to the 2nd and 3rd respondent (NRM and EC of NRM) whom he accused of failure to organise free and fair elections and did not resist such directives issued by the 1st respondent (Mr Museveni), which directive violated Section 44 1, 2, and b of the constitution of the NRM, which caused violence and rigging of the elections."

Obviously, Museveni will 'silence' this petition but the message is in black and white.

Many of the aggrieved and disillusioned victims are threatening to go independent but for Museveni who does not believe in political pluralism, it doesn't matter. On the contrary, he would be a bit bothered if they were crossing to the opposition. Since he categorises them as cheap, greedy and unprincipled, he knows that even as independents they will still crawl to him for patronage. Furthermore, he also strongly believes that his NRM party primaries, shoddy as they were, represented the will of Ugandans and can be equated to the national elections. Therefore, what remains is just a  ritual by the national Electoral Commission early 2021.  

INFORMATION IS POWER AND THE PROBLEM OF UGANDA IS MUSEVENISM