EC boss Badru Kiggundu and NCF chief Dr. Rugunda at the meeting. Photo by Peter Busomoke
Rugunda welcomes electoral
reforms ahead of 2016 polls
Publish Date: Jan 22, 2013
By Moses Walubiri
ICT Minister and chairperson National Consultative Forum (NCF), Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, has extolled efforts aimed at introducing electoral reforms ahead of 2016 polls as “a viable tool” to ensure that the Electoral Commission presides over “credible, transparent and acceptable elections.”
ICT Minister and chairperson National Consultative Forum (NCF), Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, has extolled efforts aimed at introducing electoral reforms ahead of 2016 polls as “a viable tool” to ensure that the Electoral Commission presides over “credible, transparent and acceptable elections.”
Presiding over the opening of a five-day retreat of representatives of the 38 political parties and other key stakeholders at Imperial Golf View Hotel – Entebbe Tuesday, Rugunda rooted for transparency of the electoral process to defuse what he called “unnecessary uncertainty and suspicion” during election cycles.
The retreat is also tailored to producing an acceptable draft of a code of conduct for political parties and a blue print to govern inter-party interactions under the NCF framework.
“Electoral reforms are tailored to the common good of Ugandans and this will show that the EC is ready to conduct transparent, credible and acceptable elections,” Rugunda said.
UNDP country representative,
Lebogang Motlana dubbed conducting credible elections a vital cog in ensuring
stability which is vital for economic transformation.
“These are essential tenets for a stable democracy and prosperity. There is no country that has achieved prosperity without stability,” Motlan said in reference to the mooted code of conduct for political parties and electoral reforms.
Since the return to multiparty dispensation in 2006, opposition political parties have voiced their disquiet about an uneven ‘political playing field’ during elections, citing the composition of the EC that is wholly appointed by the president as proof of the electoral body’s inability to conduct credible elections.
Opposition parties have also clamored for streamlining of the role of security forces in the electoral process, to avoid what they deem as undue influence of the process in the ruling party’s favor.
All these issues will be discussed as the ruling party and opposition parties try their hands on electoral reform – an issue that has propped up at every election cycle.
The retreat is being help under the auspices of the UNDP and is being graced by EC boss Dr. Badru Kiggundu and Deputy Attorney General, Fred Ruhindi.
Mzee Bidandi-Ssali
Bidandi's open letter to Museveni
http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3109:bidandis-open-letter-to-museveni&catid=37:guest-writers&Itemid=66
Monday, 27 April 2009 09:33
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni,
President,
Republic of Uganda,
Your Excellency,
I salute you Mr. President.
I am addressing you on the delay of the amendment of the electoral laws as a matter of extreme
concern for peace and stability of our country. The Electoral Commission has
announced a programme for the 2011 general elections well in time for the
people of Uganda
to be sensitized to play their constitutional right to elect their leaders for
another five years.
Mr. President, the People’s Progressive Party and indeed all peace loving Ugandans are worried that, up to now your government has not bothered to bring to Parliament the necessary amendments to the electoral laws that should ensure free and fair elections.
Your Excellency must be aware of the controversies that followed the 2001 and 2006 elections that ended in Courts of Law whose verdict was that, the electoral process was marred by malpractices which many consider worse than those which triggered your heading for the bush to wage an armed war against the Obote II government. You need not be reminded of the price this country has paid as a consequence in terms of blood epitomized to date by monuments of human skulls and the tragedy of the northern war which still claims lives of Ugandans and has created a traumatized society in disarray whose hearts will continue bleeding for decades to come.
Judging by what has been happening during the by-elections which have included intimidation, beating of voters and stuffing of ballot boxes perpetrated especially by your NRM, the country is likely to experience the same if not worse chaos come 2011.
The primary solution obviously lies in amending the electoral laws and procedures in order to ensure free and fair elections. The PPP and other Parties are certainly working to dislodge you from the leadership of this country to arrest further destruction of the country, your good beginning in the eighties and nineties notwithstanding. However, the PPP will not raise a finger if your unbridled love for power is achieved through free and fair elections which unfortunately are not possible with the present Electoral Commission and present laws.
Mr. President, we see your unwillingness to amend the electoral laws as part of a deliberate scheme to rig the 2011 elections so that even if ultimately some amendments are stampeded through Parliament, it will be logically impossible to implement them because of time and resource constraints.
I can assure Your Excellency that that will be a recipe for another spate of bloody chaos in the country. You might have equipped the army, militarized the police and the civil service and misused the poor peasants’ children by training them into Kiboko Squads to beat the very people you are mandated to protect but this time the price in human blood and subsequent skulls could be much more than the country has seen before.
In stating so, I am not a harbinger of doom, but one only needs to feel the political pulse of the people of Uganda today and place it in focus with our past and what recently went on in countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe.
This is the time to reconstitute the Electoral Commission in order to reflect a credible institution that will not only be, but also appear to Ugandans to be impartial under a multiparty democracy. Be informed Mr. President that there is a limit beyond which reliance on money or the might of the gun and other means of coercion will keep one in power against the will of the majority of the people’s wish.
Incidentally Your Excellency, what really happened to the Museveni of the eighties and nineties? Why have you persisted in destroying the democratic institutions of governance with impunity and instead taken over their roles? Why set Parliament against the Presidency? Cultural institutions against each other? Public officers against each other? As a student of political science, what does NEPOTISM mean to you? And what do you feel when its ugly face and consequences are attributed to your leadership? When you read in The Independent Newsmagazine issues detailing the involvement of almost your entire family and relatives in the governance of the country, isn’t your conscience perturbed in any way?
Mr. President, you have played your part and made a monumental contribution to this country. You have an obligation to hand over to the next generation a united, peaceful and free Uganda with its people living in harmony.
A word about my son Muhoozi Kainerugaba. I know him well enough. By nature and training he should be one of the finest soldiers we have in the country. Please protect him by weaning him from your parental grip to enable him fulfill his professional mandate to the country. He is NOT his father’s soldier. You have ceded Muhoozi the son to the service of Uganda and its people. Set him free so that his destiny is not embroiled in your destiny which in the end will be defined and decided by your own actions and decisions. This is a divine law of nature that has enabled the children of past leaders like Amin, Obote, Lutwa and others live peacefully outside the shadows of their parents. The same position though does not hold in respect of the children of the late Mobutu Sese Seko or the Sadams of yesterday.
You and I are not prodigies of the whims of the late Kaguta your dad or Bumali Kakonge, my late father.
Finally, let me once again assure Your Excellency that I write all this to caution a colleague I respect but who I believe has lost conscience and all ethical ethos of leadership, and therefore bound to land our country in the abyss of further disintegration, hatred and chaos.
FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY.
Bidandi-Ssali
Chairman,
People’s Progressive Party
