By John Ricardo Munyegera
Local council one and two elections in Uganda are simply a history of friction, deceit and postponement. This has been the case since 1998. This is the year Ugandans last had a chance to elect local council one.
In many villages, the LC 1 chairpersons have passed on even including their committee members. There are many functions of these leaders but in most cases; they are simply left out. The electoral commission led by Engineer Dr. Badru Kiggundu has for most of the time mentioned the fact that; they lack funds to arrange these elections.
Last year (December 22nd 2015), Engineer Dr. Kiggundu mentioned that the LC 1&2 elections might not take place unless the government was willing to fund them with UGX44Bn. This was in the estimate budget, yet the government had only offered Shs7Bn for the same. Since then, the elections for local councils one and two are stuck in balance. Instead of requesting for the same funding, the EC Chairman went ahead to request the parliament for a supplementary budget on Monday 20th March 2016 for construction of the EC headquarters worthy UGX82Bn.
Unfortunately the lawmakers on the legal and parliamentary affairs committee rejected his request to fund this project. The dilemma it creates is that, we’re not ready for democracy. We seem to jump from the flying pan directly into fire. Ugandans by then (1980s) were tired of dictatorships and indeed rigging of elections! The reason those who felt rigged out of the election found it necessary to start the Luweero bush war.
The fundamental principles of democracy like how to organize elections, voter education and others have never been implemented since then. This is true of the history of court cases which have ended agreeing to the fact that there have been malpractices but that won’t overturn the elections. Greed for power can also be adduced to this. Many leaders in this country can never believe in relinquishing power even though they have served enough.
One example can be the longer list of government historical and famous politicians in the country who have lost at the end miserably but continue viewing those elected as being cheated out. The reason I think so is that we’re simply not prepared enough to observe democratic principles and practices henceforth misbehaving in everything we do. Poor planning as well can be a bigger problem even though accountability also comes in at the end as a negative result to the many government ministries and projects.
This bridges a lot more questions whether Uganda is ready for the practice of democracy and indeed democratization in general. The democratic practices and principles are quite important and needed to be implemented however, like all developing countries were Uganda belongs; it’s just that expensive! It’s too sad that we need these people or our leaders to be elected but when you look at this venture economically; it’s not worth the investment.
If you analyze the electoral commission’s budget through the years you can agree with me that, it has been such a horror movie for the many Ugandans. Apart from that, the many questions lingering the elections in Uganda also can make one turn his head in annoyance. For about three times in a row; always there’s a great dilemma over vote rigging, stuffing and other electoral malpractices in general.
This has been shown through example of cases in the Supreme Court. Rtd. Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye’s case of 2006 was indeed another eye-opener that at least there have been vote rigging even though not that substantial. Not only that but Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere recently argued that vote rigging and stuffing is sincerely part of the electoral processes in Uganda. It’s a wrong assertion from the professor but anyway they’re the system, what can a common like me say. The only thing we can all adduce to is that we’re simply led by people who actually hate the democratic processes and principles.
When you make a foresight on those scenarios, then you can agree with me that we have something else not necessarily democracy as we may think in Uganda. Since it’s an expensive venture we end up forgetting the local council one election. It seems unfair but you need to look at it this way; how comes that when it reaches this level; there are no funds.
One needed appeal to the EC and the government is that, there is great need for these elections. This is simply grassroots’ civic duties for us as Ugandans. Many may seem never to see the importance of local council one now, but remember that day when you need a letter from them and you receive an absolute negative answer from the chairperson as he or she doesn’t know you properly or you need to give him something. Local council elections can be one way for the EC to further educate many Ugandans about how they can vote properly. In the future, this might reduce on the number of invalid votes too.