The Fundamental Lessons Derived From The 2016 Elections And How To Improve Uganda’s Electoral Process

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