Butambala vote recount is today

The recount of Butambala district woman Member of Parliament votes is slated for today (Monday).

This comes after court on Friday ruled that the votes from one of the six sub counties should be recounted at the court premises.

The sub county under contest is Budde where the complainant is alleging that there was a lot of rigging and most of her votes were mistaken to be invalid.

Mpigi court chief magistrate Jolly Ankole ordered the recount after Aisha Kabanda (NRM), one of the candidates,  protested the results.

"The votes from Budde Sub County should be recounted in front of the court officials, police and the two parties," she said.

The court order comes scarcely a week after the former Kampala Resident City Commissioner (RCC) Kabanda was defeated by Lydia Mirembe (independent) in the race for the Butambala district woman MP seat.
 
Mirembe emerged the winner of the Butambala Woman MP seat after gathering 14,760, votes to beat Kabanda. Kabanda got 14,693 votes while the incumbent, Mariam Nalubega (Ind) scored 381 votes.

Defeated Kabanda after the result were read, she challenged them asking the district returning officer Stephen Makubuya for a recount.

However, Makubuya advised her to challenge the results through court saying that the law does not allow a recount.

"The law does not allow a recount once the difference of votes polled by the contests is above 50 votes. So the case here, Mirembe beat Kabanda with a difference of 67 votes," he explained.

On the advice from the Electoral Commission (EC), Kabanda told her supporters who had flocked the EC offices that she is heading to court to challenge the results.

"We can't accept this, let me go and get good advocates who will represent us in court as we challenge this broad day robbery.
It is absurd, results can change in a fraction of a second," she said.

Kabanda contends the results are questionable because of some anomalies on some of the electoral materials.

According to her, she will demand a recount of the results by seeking a court order.

"We are seeking for a recount of the ballot. We have issues with the statement of polls; at some statement have figures that differs from others,' she said.

Last Friday, the Butambala district ran riot after the returing officer Stephen Makubuya announced that President Yoweri Museveni (NRM), Lydia Mirembe (Independent) and DP's Muwanga Kivumbi as winners in the district for presidential, Woman representative and Butambala County directly elected MP.

The results were got with mixed feeling especially the women MP; whereas many were jubilating others were left with tear after the loss of their dear candidate Kabanda.

Many protested the results to the extent of threatening to burn down the office of the district EC.