The Fundamental Lessons Derived From The 2016 Elections And
How To Improve Uganda’s Electoral Process
At last the much awaited 2016 national elections were concluded
with incumbent president Yoweri Museveni retaining his seat that will accumulate
his stay in power to 35 years by 2021.
All said and done, the pre-election excitement has not matched
the post election silence that has reverberated around the country.
Most Ugandans had expected this 2016 election to be so tight
that a re-run was one of the expected outcomes. There was a wide spread feeling
that the opposition had galvanized enough gravitas to deny incumbent president Yoweri
Museveni the outright majority percentage of 51%.
But at the end of the day the electoral commission chairman Mr.
Badru Kigundu announced that the 71-year-old Ugandan leader had won 60.75% of
the vote while his nearest rival Kizza Besigye took 35%, the election sending
the country into total silence.
Some of the observers like former Nigerian president Olsegun
Obasanjo were quoted saying that the election did not meet the minimum
requirement of a democratic process. While EU Chief Observer Eduard Kukan said
the governing National Resistance Movement's "domination of the political
landscape distorted the fairness of the campaign"
Amidst of foul play, vote rigging and arrest of the two opposition
figures Dr Kiza Besigye And Amama Mbabazi , who were under house arrest (by the
time we opened this blog), its widely clear that time is running out for the
duo to challenge the results in the
supreme court since the ten days prescribed for doing so after the election as
mandated by the constitution, are elapsing very fast.
But there are some paramount lessons we have drawn from this
2016 election.
POOR TIMING
One of the fundamental lessons we leant from the exercise
was that, it was an obvious mistake or rather illogical to hold the
presidential elections together with those of Member of Parliament on the same
day.
This dual arrangement caused a mix up during the vote tallying
process to an extent that the results of some MPs were not tallied in a
satisfactory manner.
For instance one shameless returning officer announced deputy
speaker Hon Jacob Oulanya the winner of Omoro County without giving the specific
vote count or percentage. The returning officer bluntly argued that he was
distracted by the tedious process of tally up votes from the presidential elections
and therefore had not firm grip on the outcome of those of the MPs!
Can you imagine that!. with such scenarios , violence becomes inevitable.
WAY FORWARD
A provision should be put in the electoral law that bars
presidential elections from being held on the same day with those of the legislators.
This will create a
sense of specialization and get rid of the imperfections and clashes that are associated
with hold them concurrently with those of MPs.
The other benefit is
that it makes the tallying process easier for the presiding officers who have to
tally votes in the night since the voting exercise ends in the evenings.
PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTIONS SHOULD COME LAST
Another lesson which is directly related to the
aforementioned is that having presidential elections first grossly affected the
enthusiasm for the subsequent elections amongst the voters.
It so happens that after holding the presidential elections,
the voter turn up got worse.
While the voter turn up was only 51%of the total votes for
the presidential elections, the percentage voter turn up for the subsequent
elections , mayors, etc sank as low as 20%.
This was because the electorate had invested all their
energies in the presidential elections and it so happens that they couldn’t galvanize
their enthusiasm for other elections.
WAY FORWARD
The law should be revised so that the presidential elections
come last other than first.
This means that the elections for LC 5 chairmen, mayors and
councilors are held first as pilot project for the EC to perfect its inefficiencies.
Once this is done, it will fine tune the electoral commission
to taste its preparedness on the lesser election other than starting from the
presidential election, which is far bigger, more challenging and crucial for
the country.
The first elections can prepare the EC on so many things
which include the modalities of transportation of voting materials, the use of
new biometric systems, challenges involved in tallying the votes etc.
Otherwise starting with presidential elections has proved be
catastrophic since it has not provided the EC with room for adjustment, as the
case can be when the presidential elections are held last.
Minor cases like late arrival of voting materials would not
arise if presidential elections are held last because the EC machinery would
have perfected its art through the first elections.
THE PRESIDENTIAL
DEBATE
The 2016 presidential elections introduced the trend of presidential
debate with eight of the presidential candidates expounding on the issues concerning
the country.
Although president Museveni skipped one of the debates and
attended the second one, it turned out to be the way to go in as far as ascertaining
the ability of the aspiring candidates.
But the two debates were not enough to exhaust the debate on
most the challenges affecting the country.
Way forward
The Culture of the presidential debate must be conscripted
into the electoral laws so that Ugandans can get the feel of the people who
want to lead them. In fact the EC should organize a preliminary presidential
debate to eliminate the jokers from the race. This will help in retaining the
cream candidates other than having so many, like the case was.
At best four presidential candidates on the ballot paper should
be enough
TALLYING PROCESS
Former Russian president Joseph Stalin is quoted to have
said that it’s not the voter that counts but the one that counts the votes that
matters.
Stalin was trying to say that the tallying process was more important
that the voting process itself.
And this reality was brought to the fore during this
campaign.
There is an insensitive
provision within the electoral law which mandates the EC chairman to announce
the results within 48 hours of voting.
And it was this law which misled the EC chairman to announce
the winner of the presidential elections when another 40% of the vote had not yet
been tallied!.
In other words Prof Badru Kigundu made the announcement when
results from Over 1500 tally centers had not yet tallied the votes.
This means that Ugandans did not get to know the aggregate vote
percentage outcome from this election since a big percentage was not included
in the aggregate vote.
WAY FORWARD
This law must be revised and shifted from announcing after
48 hours after voting to make it mandatory for the EC chairman to only announce
the final results when all votes from all tally centers have arrived at the
main tally center. This is the only way the total will of Ugandans will be
reflected through an electoral process.
Ends
Fred Daka Kamwada Kamwada is a senior journalist, social
critic and blogger
Get to him on
kamwadafred@yahoo.com
