THE OBSERVER UG

The erroneous ballot paper

The Electoral Commission has cancelled and postponed the Namayumba sub county chairperson elections due to an error on the ballot paper.


Wakiso district returning officer, Tolbert Musinguzi says because NRM was wrongly printed as the party for the opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate, this had completely changed the identity of the NUP candidate Mustafa Ssekweyama.

“The election which was supposed to take place for the LC III chairperson for Namayumba today has been postponed to tomorrow same time. This has been occasioned by an error which has happened on the ballot paper especially on the parties that were represented. So the commission moving under Section 50 which governs us, has decided to postpone this election to tomorrow such that that error can be rectified and the ballot paper is clear. The error was under the candidate of NUP, the NUP symbol was there visible but the name of the party instead of NUP, the put NRM. That is what has happened and that changes the whole identity of the candidate,” said Musinguzi. 

This is the second time the commission is cancelling the same election. In the first incident, the commission misspelt the name of the NRM candidate, Muzenze Joseph, and instead wrote ‘Musenze’.

Prior to the cancellation of the polls, NUP supporters had refused to cast their votes, saying the error on the ballot was deliberate and meant to facility vote-rigging in favour of the NRM candidate.  

Henry Kintu, a supporter of NUP says that when he arrived at the polling station in the morning to cast his vote, he was perplexed by the erroneous ballot paper and decided to shun the exercise. 

Ssekweyama, the NUP candidate, said this was done intentionally to pave way for the NRM candidate to fraudulently win the election. Joseph Muzenze, the NRM candidate, said that they have spent a lot of money in organizing their agents and the commission should not have postponed the election over such a ‘small’ error.  

Four candidates are contesting for the Namayumba sub-county chairperson seat.  The other candidates are Wamala Matia Lwanga from FDC and Joseph Bwette, an independent.





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