Why cloud of 2021 polls still hovers over Uganda

On September 12, President Museveni came out to say the Opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) had stolen votes during the 2021 General Election.

 “I have now got all the evidence that in the last election, NUP cheated by one million votes. I have the facts. NUP can take me to court and they say Museveni has falsely accused them, but this is what happened. One million votes!” Mr Museveni declared as he spoke at the close of the first defence expo.

The expo was organised in memory of the late former army commander and later minister for Internal Affairs, Gen Aronda Nyakairima.

NUP’s presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka Bobi Wine, came second in the 2021 polls with 3,631,437 votes, representing 35.08 percent of the votes cast. Mr Museveni was declared winner with 6,042,898 votes, which represented 58.38 percent of the 10,744,319 votes cast.

Mr Museveni’s claim would, therefore, mean that -Mr Kyagulanyi’s “actual vote” was 2,631,437 votes and not what the Electoral Commission (EC) declared.

The rigging, Mr Museveni claimed, was made possible because the EC chose to proceed with the polls even after the biometric machines that had been meant to assist with voter verification and identification broke down.

Mr Museveni has, as expected, since come under fire for those comments.

Dr Frank Nabwiso, a former member of the external wing of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) based in Nairobi, Kenya during the Bush War of 1981-1986, who has since quit the NRM for the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), described Mr Museveni’s comments as an “own goal”.

“First of all, he is telling lies. Secondly, he is passing a vote of no confidence in himself. He is the person who elected (Justice Simon) Byabakama’s Electoral Commission. Now if it is proved that the people or the commission that you elected was negligent and it allowed people to steal your vote, then it means that you yourself elected incompetent people. It is a vote against himself,” Dr Nabwiso says.

Timing

It is worth noting that whereas the initial debate that Mr Museveni’s claims were around whether it was even possible for one to rig an election in favour of anyone other than the NRM’s presidential candidate, the point of discussion has since shifted to focus on the timing of the President’s claims.

Mr Museveni’s comments came 44 months after he was declared winner of an election whose outcome the NUP still contests.

Those comments also came 13 months after the EC released the 2025/2026 electoral roadmap.

According to the EC’s roadmap, presidential and parliamentary elections, polls for local government councils, including those of special interest groups, are scheduled to be held in the period between January 12 and February 9, 2026. That means that Mr Museveni’s comments came at a time when the country was only 16 months away from the next general election.

The period has since been reduced to 15 months. Should the focus, therefore, be on the rigging that occurred in the 2021 elections? Or should it be about how electoral processes should be improved to avert the kind of rigging that Mr Museveni now claims occurred in the last election? Should Mr Museveni be talking about an election of years past when the next election is fast approaching? Those are some of the questions on the discussion tables.

Mr Godfrey Kabyanga, the State minister for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and National Guidance, says there is nothing wrong with addressing issues of an election gone by.

“The talk (about the 2021 polls) will continue even for the next 20 years. Up to now, we are still talking about what happened in the run-up to independence. We talk of the alliances and syndicates that occurred 62 years ago,” says Mr Kabyanga.

Mr David Lewis Rubongoya, the general secretary of NUP, says those who are keen on addressing issues around the alleged rigging that occurred in the polls should also be willing to address NUP’s demands regarding the same.

“We have been demanding an audit of the 2021 elections. The regime has, of course, not acquiesced to the same, but if they are claiming that there was rigging, what better way to prove it than by allowing such an audit?” Mr Rubongoya says.

Mr Rubongoya and other NUP leaders have always insisted that it was the NRM that rigged, an argument that the NRM has always denied.

Dr Chris Baryomunsi, the minister for ICT, told  Monitor in a previous interview that voting processes are transparent enough to allow actors to establish with certainty what they will have garnered at the different polling stations.

“The voting is in the open, people come and they vote. At 4pm they close and they count when everybody is there and they record them. Everybody in their village knows how they voted at their polling station. They know that at this polling station, Museveni got this, [former FDC president Kizza] Besigye got the other. If Besigye was the winner, people at a particular polling station would know,” Dr Baryomunsi said.

Mr Rubongoya, however, says the NRM would not have gone the length it did to block the flow of information if systems were as transparent as Dr Baryomunsi suggests. “Why did they have to switch off the internet? Why did they have to instruct TV stations and radio stations not to relay results as they were coming in? Why did they have to arrest many of our polling agents? Why did they have to detain people who had our declaration forms? Why did they engage in widespread abductions of our people?” Mr Rubongoya asked.

NUP has been accusing security agencies of killing and abducting its supporters since November 2020.

It should be remembered that at least 54 people, most of them believed to have been NUP supporters, were killed and others sustained serious injuries as security forces worked to end two days of protests that broke out following the arrest on November 18, 2020, in Luuka District of the party’s presidential candidate, Mr Kyagulanyi, on charges of breaching Covid-19 regulations.

In March 2021, the party outed a list of 458 people that it claimed had been abducted, a claim that the government denied.

However, country reports on human rights practices that have been published by the Department of State of the United States for the years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 have consistently called out security agencies for involvement in the abduction of Opposition supporters and involvement in politically motivated killings.

The “2023 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Uganda”, for example, notes that, “There were numerous reports of disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities. Local media, Opposition political parties, and human rights lawyers reported the military – particularly the Chieftaincy for Military Intelligence (CMI) and the Special Forces Command (SFC) – and police held individuals, often Opposition supporters, at unidentified locations without charge.”

Amnesty International has in its World Report 2024 accused the government of arresting and harassing Opposition leaders and supporters and encroachment on the citizenry’s right to associate and assemble.

Criminals hiding behind politics?

Mr Kabyanga, however, says the government has never set out to target NUP supporters. He argues that criminal elements who run afoul of the law are hiding behind the political parties that they claim to subscribe to escape justice.

In any case, he adds, even those who claim to be NRM supporters are never spared when they break the law.

“There must be a reason behind every arrest. It is not because they are NUP supporters. Most of them are arrested because they have committed different offences, but want to use politics to cover themselves. If wrongdoers have been arrested, whether they are NUP, NRM, or DP they are wrong elements. Even NRM people are arrested. You remember Abdallah Kitatta. He was a thug. He used to sing NRM better than anybody, but that did not stop security from arresting him,” Mr Kabyanga says.

Kitatta, who was the patron of Boda 2010, was considered one of the most influential NRM leaders in Kampala. He was also considered a friend of the former Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura. He was, however, arrested and sentenced to eight years in jail by the General Court Martial in May 2019 for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. He was sentenced along with his bodyguard, Sowali Ngobi.

Stuck 2021 mode?

There are, however, those who argue that the country is either stuck in 2021 mode or still suffering the effects of a hangover from the same. Mr Rubongoya says developments on the political landscape suggest that “the cloud of the 2021 polls still hovers over the country”.

“We are still grappling with the issue of missing persons. We are still looking for 18 people who are missing up to now. The country has not moved on. As we go into another election there are still very many unresolved issues that emerged out of the 2021 elections. Some people are in prison on charges related to those polls, there are abductions of our supporters as well,” Mr Rubongoya says.

Mr Rubongoya further says some of the electoral disputes arising out of the same election have never been disposed of, a claim which Mr James Jumire Ereemye, the spokesperson of the Judiciary, dismisses. “That is wrong information. All cases at all levels were disposed of in record time. Those that went on appeal were equally disposed of. We have no pending election-related cases,” Mr Ereemye said.

No surprises!

However, Ms Alice Alaso, the coordinator of the Opposition Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) weighs in, saying it should not come as a surprise to anyone that Uganda is actually stuck. The problem, she says, comes from a lack of willingness to conduct electoral reforms.

“I think being stuck is more or less the default mode now. Why wouldn’t we be stuck when all the issues about elections that we have highlighted, the ones that the courts have directed that there should be a change to electoral laws, civil society and political parties have submitted proposals for electoral reforms and nothing has been done?” she asks.

Matters, she says, have not been helped by the fact that the same President has been ruling over the country for a very long time.

“We are stuck with the same President. Remember he is a key actor in our elections. He appoints the EC. He orders the army, they play to his tune and deliver him to the next election. Why would we not be stuck if it is the same actor?” Alaso asks.

She concludes that it would, in the circumstances, be surprising if things turned out any better than they do, but Mr Kabyanga disagrees.

“Why should anyone think that we are stuck in 2021 mode?” he asks.

Dr Nabwiso, who also served as the secretary to the NRM during the Nairobi Peace Talks, says there is every reason to believe that the country is stuck.

“Nothing significant has happened since 2021. Someone, therefore, has to create excuses to say that somebody has derailed him,” he says.

Retrogression?

Dr Nabwiso, however, thinks that the country has failed to move forward on account of a bankruptcy of ideas. That bankruptcy, he says, has been manifested in the gross inefficiency exhibited in the implementation and execution of government programmes. This he says has led to a decline in terms of social and economic development across the country.

“You cannot even count your people properly. Who is responsible for that? The other day the minister for Finance conceded that 59 percent of the economy is in the hands of foreigners. What is that? What is new?” Dr Nabwiso wonders.

Dr Nabwiso was alluding to the controversies that have surrounded the figures of the 2024 Uganda National Population and Census. The initial census report had reported wrong figures for the populations of Bugisu, Acholi, Langi and Bakiga. The report was later brought down from the website of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos).

Mr Kabyanga, however, does not agree with Mr Nabwiso’s take.

“We are implementing very many government programmes. There are very many programmes in the NRM manifesto for the period between 2021 and 2026 that are being implemented. We have been presenting budgets which have been approved by Parliament. Work is going on. The country is moving,” Mr Kabyanga says.

Is it really moving though?