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NRM to set up own results tally centre
President Museveni holds a spear and shield presented to him by NRM leaders from Tooro Sub-region during his campaign meeting at the Boma grounds in Fort portal City yestetday. The NRM party is planning to set up its own tally centre for 2021 election results . PHOTOS/KELVIN ATUHAIRE
What you need to know:
The NRM party leadership says they shall have an automatic tally application at their centre through which they will receive results from all the district.
The National Resistance Movement (NRM) has announced it will set up its own tally centre for the election results on January 14, parallel to the Electoral Commission national tally centre.
Mr Saleh Kamba, the NRM head of political intelligence at the office of the national chairperson (ONC), said the party will have its own tally centre in Kampala to coordinate and collect results of their presidential candidate after the polls.
“So we shall have an automatic tally application provided by the national chairman’s tally centre through which the results stated on the official declaration form at the district level will be sent,” Mr Kamba said yesterday at the launch of the NRM voter protection teams in Kampala.
Mr Kamba said the tally centre will be in Kampala and it will be manned by political and IT experts to ensure the results are swiftly tallied.
“As the Electoral Commission receives results from the districts, for us we expect the agents to have informed us of what happened at the polling station in advance to help counter if there is a problem at the district because if the results which reached the district are different from what we received directly from the polling stations, then we shall be able to verify and counter,” he added.
“In most cases we are going to be online. We are going to supply an application because that is the reason why at recruitment of vote protectors, we emphasized the issue of having a smart phone. Things are now swift, once that person accesses network, we shall be able to coordinate with that person, live from here [Kampala],” Mr Kamba said.
The launch was attended by security officers and party officials who included the UPDF chief political commissar Brig Gen Henry Matsiko, deputy director of Internal Security Organisation (ISO) Maj Emmy Katabazi, NRM’s first vice chairperson Moses Kigongo and senior presidential adviser on political affairs Milly Babalanda.
The party officials revealed that each polling station will be manned by a minimum of two polling agents who will only be deployed after they have been fully screened and cleared by the NRM district security committee.
EC responds
The Electoral Commission spokesperson, Mr Paul Bukenya, said political parties are allowed to monitor and track results of their presidential candidates but are barred from announcing the winner.
“A political party is allowed to have their agents at polling stations to keep track of their candidate’s results. In doing so, they can even obtain a copy of the declaration of results forms at a place they may choose. So I believe they [NRM] could be doing so in that line,” Mr Bukenya said.
He, however, insisted that this can only be done on condition that the political parties don’t announce the results of their candidates since it is only the EC allowed to officially announce the results of presidential candidates.
In February 2016, police arrested Forum for Democratic Change presidential candidate Kizza Besigye, party president Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu and FDC’S national mobilisation secretary Ingrid Turinawe from their party headquarters in Najjanankumbi, Kampala.
The clashes between police and FDC officials started after the party’s top leadership announced that they had their own parallel election results tally centre and would be releasing their own results.
