No time to organise polls for prisoners — EC

Politics

Whereas every Ugandan should have a chance to participate in elections, the Electoral Commission has said it is too late to implement the court ruling that prisoners and people in the diaspora be allowed to partake of the 2021 polls.

Deputy EC boss Hajat Aisha Lubega says the commission needed to interrogate the recent judgment further to be able to give Ugandans exactly what they wanted.

She said it may not be able to put into action the judgment in the current electoral cycle.

During a meeting with a delegation from the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda (IRCU) yesterday, Lubega explained that there was no more time to go through the processes of the voters' register for both prisoners and people in the diaspora.

"When we were updating the voters' register, we displayed it and put it into a process, how will the prisoners register, without any new legislation and go through that process?" she asked, saying the process was too long. 

"The EC thinks it may not be applicable to take on these people during this electoral cycle, we cannot go into that detail," she said, adding that the people in diaspora were also spread in different countries and organising an election to include them was not easy since they did not have identity cards to prove they are Ugandans.

She said the EC did not have the budget for all the logistics needed to organise such an election.

IRCU demanded that the EC urgently convenes meetings and holds dialogue with all stakeholders, including political parties before conducting elections due next year.

According to the religious leaders, all stakeholders, including the executive, legislature, the Judiciary, all political parties and religious leaders must be consulted to let everybody get what they termed as an opportunity to contribute towards how the election should be conducted.

Other groups to be consulted, according to a statement signed by the chairperson of the IRCU, Sheikh Ramadhan Mubajje and read by Pastor John Kakembo include, cultural leaders, academia, youth, women and workers, among others.

The meeting with the EC was intended to familiarise the religious leaders with the revised roadmap for the 2020/2021 general election and to discuss pertinent issues related to the ongoing electoral process.

The commissioners were led by the EC deputy chairperson, Hajati Aisha Lubega. Others were Hajji Ssebaggala Kigozi and Peter Emurut and other officials. 

Kakembo, who represented Mubajje who left immediately after their meeting with the EC commissioners said although when put to task, they (commissioners) insisted that they had already conducted consultations with civic and political groups, the IRCU felt that it was not enough. He, however, said the EC may not have the final answers, especially to issues about scientific campaigns due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, their recommendations can be forwarded to higher levels.

According to Pastor Kakembo, after several discussions, the religious leaders had come up with a position to call for the suspension of the coming elections due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic. In the statement, the religious leaders stated that they had had discussions about the adjusted roadmap, but that it had been met with mixed reactions from citizens.