By Prossy Kisakye
After chaotic party primaries, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) members are calling for electoral reforms to improve the credibility of party primaries and strengthen Uganda’s democracy.
Otuke Member of Parliament Paul Omara, despite winning with 58%, decries the high financial burden of monitoring declaration forms to prevent result tampering, citing the risk posed when results are not issued at polling stations.
He has called for an end to the commercialisation of politics, which blocks capable leaders from rising.
“What I had to do was to hire a boda boda in every village to escort the votes to the sub county then I also had to hire boda bodas from the sub county to follow votes to the district, so the financial implication is huge because you are not given a DR form, so one of the recommendations is we should try and have DR forms for all candidates so that I don’t have to bother but if you cannot manage and control your votes then you are really in big trouble ,” Paul Omara.
Meanwhile Koboko North MP Musa Noah is calling for a clean-up of the party register to eliminate inconsistencies that denied some members their right to vote in the just concluded primaries.
He also suggests that the practice of lining up behind candidates be abandoned, arguing that it fuels violence within families and communities.
” You might find that the man supports a different candidate and the wife supports a different candidate, and normally one of the parties will be forced not to vote because the spouse will not want to see him or her support the candidate of her choice, this was mainly affecting women actually as I talk now there are families that are having serious conflicts, so I think we need to reconsider the idea of lining, the part needs to go back to secret ballot, ‘’ says Noah Musa.
The NRM primaries held across the country on July 17th were marred by violence that claimed one life, destruction of property, and allegations of voter bribery and other forms of malpractice that led to the suspension of vote tallying in a number of districts.
