Great battle for the city seat

THE Movement and multipartyists are gearing for a big showdown in the elections for the city mayor. Wasswa Ziritwawula, the candidate backed by the Movement is challenging the incumbent John Ssebaana Kizito, a self-confessed multipartyist, for the mayoral seat.What is clear is that no matter who wins the mayoral race, it will not be a walk over. Ziritwawula has the support of President Yoweri Museveni, the backing of the Movement network and huge funding. Ssebaana enjoys the support of the five Division Chairpersons, the multipartyist network, five of the area MPs and some of the Movement’s high ranking people among them local government minister Bidandi Ssali.Interestingly, Ziritwawula is not marketing himself as the Movement candidate as expected. He insists that he is standing on the basis of ‘individual merit’. Ziritwawula wants to woo both the Movement and multiparty voters. He will find it impossible to de-link his candidature from the Movement given the fact that Kampala Movement Mobilisers held a meeting twice to come up with a joint candidate.Movement election strategists think that by fielding one candidate Ziritwawula, they would consolidate the Movement vote in the city where the multipartyists have had a slim edge. They have worked out their strategy on the basis of mathematical calculations. They have analysed the data from the previous election results for Kampala and concluded that the only way to beat Ssebaana in the mayoral race is to field a single candidate.During the presidential elections, Col. Dr Kizza Besigye defeated President Yoweri Museveni in Kampala with a 14,445-vote margin. He got 269,438 votes while Museveni had 254,993 votes. Aggrey Awori, Francis Bwengye, Chaapa Karuhanga and Mayanja Kibirige had a total of 11,957 votes. Thus, the margin between the multipartyists jointly with the Reform Agenda and the Movement was only 26,402 votes. The voting pattern in the recent city division polls remained the same.The distribution of voters in the city favours Ssebaana. The Central and Nakawa, which tilt towards the Movement have the least number of voters. Makindye Division has 131,547 voters followed by Rubaga 123,005 voters, Kawempe 108,332 voters, Nakawa 93,883 voters and Central 47,075 voters. Although Rubaga North has a Movement MP, Tom Kayongo, the area cannot be described as a Movement enclave. Kayongo won because the multipartyists and Reform Agenda camps failed to agree on a joint candidate.The Ssebaana camp has expressed fear that soldiers would be brought in to vote for the Movement candidate. It is well known that in all the previous elections, results from the polling stations where soldiers vote have overwhelmingly favoured the candidates supported by the establishment. In city division polls, the number of soldiers registered as voters in the city was not very significant.There were 3,277 soldiers registered as voters in the City. Central Division had 1,314 soldiers, Nakawa 1,342 and Makindye 621. It is unlikely that the number of soldiers voting in the mayoral election would dramatically change.ends