The group of six political parties sent a joint petition to the Government of the Republic of Uganda stating its firm stand that it would not be bound by the outcome of any election held before implementing essential constitutional, legal, electoral and administrative reforms.
This petition was also provided to the Secretary General of the UN, donor community in Ug
anda, to
the international community generally and to the African Union Parliament and the East African Parliament.
No reforms whatsoever were carried out in respect of those essential areas we pointed out and therefore we participated in this election fully aware that it could not be a free or fair election.
We participated in order to use the electoral engagement to further shine a spotlight on the problems of democratisation in Uganda to both Ugandans and to the international community and to also use the electoral process as a period for education and mobilisation of the Ugandan people to understand the functioning of a democracy and especially a multiparty democracy.
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| CHALLENGING RESULTS: Besigye |
Secondly, we also hoped to use the overwhelming popular discontent in the country to override the many disadvantages that were arranged against having a free and fair election and still achieve an electoral victory. It is now known that the campaigns preceding this election were grossly skewed.
The campaign started with the candidate, myself, being under illegal detention for three weeks while the rest were campaigning. It was characterised by intimidation, harassment and violence against the FDC leaders and supporters as you may have witnessed through out the election, notable of which was in eastern Uganda where we saw for the first time, NRM militants in NRM uniforms, armed with machine guns and rampaging against our supporters. Similar violence was witnessed in Kampala, at various places including the senseless killing of our supporters at Bulange, the seat of the Buganda Government.
Throughout the campaigns, we witnessed many arrests, detentions and
torture
of many of our supporters and leaders across the country. All these acts of intimidation, harassment and violence were reported to the EC and up to the time of the elections, no response had been received.
The campaign was also marked by media bias in which the government media literally functioned as media of NRM to promote the candidature of President Museveni and undermine that of the opposition. There were also many instances were we were blocked from using even the private media by state functionaries notable in which, was in Gulu, Mbarara, Tororo, Nebbi, Arua and many others. There was also the denial of campaign grounds, which were vital here in Kampala, where the President's Office blocked all possible campaign grounds for many days in which it was critical that we undertake campaign activities including the nomination and the final campaign rallies that where held here in Kampala.
Therefore we went through the campaign that was marked by gross unfairn
ess
occasioned by the state and in which we did not consider it to be an environment conducive to free and fair _expression_ on the Ugandan electorate.
The election that was held on the 23rd of February was itself marred by widespread irregularities, malpractices and electoral offences. These included arresting, evicting and refusal to perform of our polling agents, stuffing of ballot boxes, multiple voting, bribery, falsifying of results, creation of fake polling centres, the absence of many voters' names on the voters' register while the voters had voters' cards but could not vote and the use of the military and security organs to create intimidation and harassment of voters and many other irregularities.
We are therefore surprised that some international observers have endorsed this flawed process based solely on observations that they were able to make themselves on polling day completely ignoring the many reports that have been given to them and the incidents th
at we
now have at the expense of the irregularities.
The tallying and announcement of the electoral results has been especially problematic. The EC is required to announce results arising out of tally sheets that they receive from a district centre and we are supposed to receive copies from those tally centres as they come in. This is not just a procedure, it's a legal requirement of the law of the Presidential Elections Act. That is the only way in which results can be coordinated.
The EC has however gone ahead and announced results since yesterday without these tally sheets being received form the tally centre. The FDC formally objected to the EC in writing and calling upon the Commission to desist from announcing results based on an illegal communication.
We are disturbed that the EC ignored our plea and continued announcing results until a short time before they purported to announce the final results. They have done so without the necessary tally
sheets.
I also wish to inform you that have also had our own tally centre collating polling results from across the country that come from our own polling agents. Unfortunately, our collecting system has been slower than the illegal procedure of the EC. Until this evening, we have only results from a quarter of the polling stations.
However all the stations that we have are equally distributed throughout the whole country from all the districts and we have observed very big variations between what is coming out of our tally centre and what is being announced by the EC.
We again wrote to EC earlier on today pointing this out and further imploring them to desist from making further announcement of results until they get the tally sheets from the district centres which plea they once again ignored.
Therefore the FDC has taken a decision to reject the results announced by the EC and to say that we are still gathering our own information which we ho
pe will
be complete in another day or so and that we shall decide on further action once we have all the information that we need.
In the meantime we would like to call upon our supporters to remain calm, to ignore what the EC has announced and what the NRM is doing and to wait for further communication as to what steps we shall be taking additionally.
Incidentally even as we talk this afternoon, the police and military besieged or offices, brought tear gas things around our offices and this was because a few of our supporters were gathered there just to know what is going on and from what I have been told, there is firing of weapons round them.
This is obviously a matter of grave concern for us and to us FDC, as a legal party, we are committed to observing the law of this country, we have rights as a political party and its disgraceful that the NRM government has chosen to abuse its power to terrorize opponents.
JournalistsÂ’ questions What action
are you
going to take?
Whatever action we decide will be guided by the information that we receive. I think it is imprudent of me to postulate what kind of action we are likely to take without knowing what kind of information we ultimately assemble in its totality. In other words, one would also from that, assume that all options are open depending on the kind of information that we get
Did you receive any pressure from any diplomatic missions to accept the results?
No; we obviously could not be pressured along both directions to accept or not accept but we have had discussions with some members of the Governance and Democracy Group, a group of donor countries that have been supporting the election what they were picking from the community was that they would be anxious for us to do our best to avoid violence in the post election period.
I think that was largely expressed in their concern. But we have, of course, used the occasion to expre
ss our
disappointment in their hurried comment on the nature of the elections based on very inadequate information, even ourselves who are interested in this election, who have the biggest resource from which can get information, we had polling agents at every polling centre in Uganda, were unable to make conclusive assessment of the national but these 100, 200 gentlemen who arrived the other day and spent yesterday moving up and down are already making an assertive condition of what the election was. We find this imprudent, really, and especially considering their previous reports in this country, they were not exactly impressed by hurried and inaccurate, in our view, statement.
You may recall that in 1980, there was a coup in this country after an election. The head of state at that time announced that he had taken over the powers of the Electoral Commission; he went ahead and announced whatever results he wanted and the Observer Group of that election said that the elect
ion was
generally free and fair.
That was the election that sent Museveni incidentally to the bush to fight. In 2001, we had a similar situation here; where the observers came here and said the election was generally free and fair. We went to the court and all the five judges of the Supreme Court found incredible evidence that rigging had taken place in that election.
They found that there where 1,137 fake polling centres; they found that the principle of secret ballot was not observed in the election and so on and so forth - not quite complimentary to what these observers reported.
Is the bush an option for FDC?
The FDC is a political party; it is a registered political party and its activities can only be political and legal.
You seem to give the impression that the election could only have been free and fair if you had won. Is that accurate?
There are essential reforms, which must be undertaken in ord
er to
have a democratic dispensation in order to make a transition. Those reforms have not been undertaken and we entered this election fully aware that those reforms have not been undertaken.
We were not under any illusion that what has happened would not happen, we expected it to happen. We expected, however that our engagement would move the process of democratisation forward.
Accepting and legitimate are different, the process cannot be legitimised by the outcome; the process is illegitimate essentially. It is fundamentally flawed and we have made that assertion long before this election took place by the G6 representation to government and all other people. We said as long as these reforms have not been undertaken, the process is fundamentally flawed.
However, if the illegitimate process produced a result that favoured us, we would not refuse the outcome, we would use the outcome to undertake those fundamental reforms.
