How Museveni Rigged the 2016 Elections in Uganda
Just remembered
Uganda's so called elections in 2016. This thing called election though. Was
that an election or something else. Let's sanitize it a little bit and called
it a rigged election. The assumption here is that there was some kind of
election. In 2016 we had a good one in Uganda. So dictator Museveni who has
turned Uganda into a fiefdom for over 3 decades rigged so openly in 2015 and
got away with it just like that. We have not forgotten that in Kiruhura which
is National Resistance Movement's (NRM) home turf Museveni there was 100%
voter turnout. It did not end at that. Museveni got all the votes. This sounds
like a possibility when you listen to radio watch the TV or read a newspaper in
passing. But in reality, there is no possibility of ever having a 100% turnout.
Technically t could mean things like no one ever died in Kiruhura between the
time Ugandans registered as voters and the actual time of casting the vote.
Two, it means that none of the voters was sick or elderly or had any impediment
to prevent them from casting their ballot. Three, it means that no single vote
was ever spoiled in Kiruhura while, in fact, this is one of the districts with
very high levels of illiteracy and there are standing studies that demonstrate
the correlation between illiteracy and commitment of errors during voting
leading to vote rejection. Just like that Kiruhura district became top in the
world for most efficient voting. But hold on. There is another trouble. Nobody
in Kiruhura ever voted for the other candidates, including known opposition
party agents from the region. For some reason they all changed their mind
during Election Day and cast their votes for Museveni. The good thing is that
the voting is by "secret ballot" so we may never really get to know
who voted for which candidate other than in Kiruhura district where we know for
a “fact” that everybody voted for Museveni.
But this is just one case. There were many more. In the
same elections ballots were late in several parts of the country. Curiously
though is that those areas that experienced lateness in delivery of election
materials are perceived to be opposition strongholds. The same opposition ran
with its hands tied in its back. Dr. Kizza Besyge was arrested several times
before during and after those things that looked like elections in Uganda,
remember? But even with the arrests, didn't the Chair of the Election
Commission - who as the referee should, at least in theory, be impartial -
declare that the opposition candidate was not a "presidential material? We
heard that as well, no? And then who remembers with me that the Chair of NRM,
the one and only Justine Lumumba had come out to warn Ugandan that the state
will shoot and kill their sons if they dared come out to protest the outcome of
an election? Etc etc So, so, that too was an election in an African country and
just like that billions of shillings of poor Ugandans were expended on the same
theater!
How Museveni Rigged the 2016 Elections in Uganda
Reviewed by Ibrahim Magara
on
November 07, 2018
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