Uganda Opposition Parties See Rigging in NRM Recruitment
The East African (Nairobi)
March 28, 2005
Posted to the web March 30, 2005
Michael Wakabi, Barbara Among and Bamuturaki Musinguzi
Nairobi
Uganda's opposition parties have protested over the ongoing updating of the national voters register and the concurrent recruitment drive by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
They said that, by targeting people as young as 13, the Movement could end up compromising the 2006 general election by encouraging voting by those who are underage. Uganda will hold presidential election in 2006 under a multiparty system.
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The executive co-ordinator of the Forum for Democratic Change, Sam Kalega Njuba, said the indiscriminate membership drive by the ruling NRM, is aimed at swelling voter numbers.
"We know they are registering their members for the purpose of voting and that is why voter registration has been muddled and given so little publicity. We are studying it against the background of the 2001 presidential elections where the number of registered voters in some districts exceeded the known population," he said.
The NRM has said it will recruit people as young as 13 years to achieve its 15-million party membership target. "We are recruiting people from the age of 13 for the purpose of promoting the Movement ideology but not to rig elections as opposition politicians are claiming," said Ofwono Opondo, the publicity secretary of the NRM party.
The updating of voters' registration was extended by one week after a three week run from March 7-25, following complaints from legislators that their constituencies had not been reached.
The opposition parties have called for an end to the voter registration and also a reconstitution of the Electoral Commission (EC) to include the different shades of political opinion in the country.
"We want to have a say in the composition of the EC and we demand that the voter registration exercise be suspended," said Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) presidential policy commission chairman Dr James Rwanyarare. He accused the government of being in "a hurry to lay the ground for the rigging of the elections; we have our doubts about the impartiality of the EC because its mandate and legitimacy are questionable."
Dr Rwanyarare said it would be difficult to create conditions for a free and fair election when the voter registration is being exclusively supervised by officials of the Movement.
The government, however, last week announced that registered parties were free to operate and that public servants who obstructed their programmes would be punished, two days after the UPC was given its registration certificate last Tuesday.
Democratic Party lawyer and Group of Six political parties' spokesman Joseph Balikudembe said the voter registration should be extended by a month because civic education should have started before the registration, he said.
"We are concerned that rigging has already started and the situation can only be saved by reconstituting the EC to include judges of the superior courts. In its present form, the EC lacks independence from the ruling party," said Mr Balikudembe.
The G6 also accused the government of deliberately not providing enough money and equipment for the voter registration. The EC had asked for Ush38 million ($22,000) for the project but the government scaled it down by 40 per cent.
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Reservations about the voter registration were expressed as soon the Ministry of Planning released the final report of the 2002 National Housing and Population Census, which showed that 56 per cent of Uganda's population were below the age of 18.
These concerns are being voiced in the backdrop of two demonstrations in Kampala last week, one against the British government for interfering in Uganda's politics and the other by the opposition against President Museveni's third term bid.
It defeats logic , I would say, for the NRM to recuit Children as young as 13 years old into the NRM camp. The age for a Ugandan adults to fully engage.... rather participate in national politics, I thought was 21, wy then would the NRM want to recuit kids which the NRM knows very well are not going to vote in national elections...if not for propaganda purpose to show to the outside world that the NRM is still popular in Uganda..and by establishing that the NRM is "popular", the NRM can now justify the rigging of Election s in the country
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