POLITICS | PARLIAMENT | BYABAKAMA 

KAMPALA - The Electoral Commission (EC) chairman, Justice Simon Byabakama, has told the Parliament Human Rights Committee that the staff of the commission who engage in electoral malpractices do so on their own.

“We usually take disciplinary action when we get evidence that our staff got involved in electoral malpractices. It is illegal. Those who do such acts do so on their own. Such people should not be anywhere near our electoral activities,” Byabakama said.

The EC boss was responding to accounts from MPs of various incidents in which EC presiding officers got involved in aiding rigging of elections.

The EC team was appearing before the committee to respond to the concerns raised in the reports of Uganda Human Rights Commission for 2018, 2019, and 2020.

Kibaale woman MP Joelina Kisembo (NRM) told the committee that in one of her elections the EC election officials grabbed her declaration forms from her agents as they were attempting to alter the election results but her team overpowered them and they released the forms.

Toroma County MP Joseph Andrew Kuluo (NRM) also narrated a similar incident in which EC officials had camped in a bush to try and change the declaration forms but his team surrounded them and failed the attempt.

In his response, Byabakama said it is a requirement by law for candidates to have declaration forms and any EC officials who confiscate the forms act illegally.

“The bulk of the EC staff are not our permanent staff. They are recruited from our society. I think we need to address the morals of our society. A presiding officer should not participate in altering results,” he explained.

Buhweju County MP (FDC) Francis Mwijukye tasked the EC boss to explain circumstances under which some people access their ballot papers, pre-tick them and ballot stuff as a common form of rigging.

Mwijukye also asked the EC team to explain why over 2 million young Ugandans who had by January 2021 reached voting age were disenfranchised and did not vote because the Electoral Commission refused to register them.

Regarding the 2 million youth who were disenfranchised, Byabakama said, “First of all it is not a deliberate move by the EC to disenfranchise any Ugandan from voting. An election is a process. You remember that elections of special interest groups happen much earlier than the general elections. 

That is why we had to limit the process of registering new voters because we had to use the same voters register for both general elections and elections for special interest groups.”

The EC chairman promised that they are looking for ways of coming up with the necessary legal reforms to ensure in future all eligible voters are registered to participate in voting.

Several MPs including the Terego woman MP Rose Obiga, the vice chairperson Jenifer Kyomuhendo Mbabazi and Gweri County MP Tom Julius Ekudo expressed concern about past incidents in which voting materials reached Kampala and surrounding areas very late yet in the furthest areas the material reached early.

Byabakama explained that the incident mostly happened in 2016 before he became the EC chairman and that he ensure such regrettable incidents don’t happen again in 2021.

Ekudo and Mwijukye expressed cited many incidents including what happened in the recent Soroti by-election in which opposition leaders and agents are arrested and yet the NRM agents are never arrested, arguing it is one of the strange happenings that make them believe the EC connives with the NRM and security agencies to rig elections.

Responding to the concern, Byabakama said, “Arrests even on polling day are normal as long as they are done within the law. The EC doesn’t act alone in the electoral processes. It acts with other stakeholders including security agencies. I have not yet received a report from police on the arrests they made in Soroti.”

On allegations about the EC playing a role in ballot stuffing, Byabakama said, “The commission can never sanction ballot stuffing. Like in the case of Soroti, at the polling station where one of the candidates smashed a box suspected to have been stuffed with ballot papers, that box was put aside.”

Opposition parties including the National Unity Platform, the Forum for Democratic Change, Justice Forum, and Peoples Progressive Party formed a cooperation arrangement for fighting electoral malpractices and pushing for reforms which will guarantee credible, free and fair elections in the country agreeable to all stakeholders.