Rains disrupt voting in municipal mayoral elections
Photo by Tonny Abet
Joint reporting
The Independent Electoral Commission is today conducting elections for Municipality/City Division Chairpersons and Councillors across the Country.
This is part of the election cycle which started on January 15 with election of President and Members of Parliament, and Special Interest Group leaders.
According to the Commission, official voting time is between 7am and 4pm. However, an early morning downpour has disrupted and delayed the start of the exercise in some parts of the country.
In Kampala’s Kabalagala and Nsambya areas, there was a light drizzle early in the morning, and by at 7am, many polling stations were not yet open.
Although this didn’t affect preparations for polling activities at some polling stations like Golden Eagle Junior School and Pantaleo Betty’s place, other polling stations like Kabalagala Central had not yet received voting materials by 7am.
At Golden Eagles Junior School, although voting materials were in place by 7am, the polling assistants were still waiting for agents of candidates and there were no people who had specifically come to vote by then.
The situation was the same at Pantaleo Betty’s place polling station in Kabalagala, where voting materials were in place, but they were still waiting for agents of candidates and people who specifically came to vote were around two in number, by 8:20am.
In Masaka, the morning downpour has affected the opening of polling stations in Masaka city due to delayed delivery of polling materials. The rain that started at around 7:50 also affected delivering polling materials. Masaka city has two divisions of Nyendo Mukungwe and Kimanya Kabonera whose seats attracted 16 candidates. Nyendo Mukungwe has the highest number of contestants that is 9 people while Kimanya Kabonera division Mayoral race attracted 7 candidates from the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), opposition National Unity Platform (NUP), Democratic Party (DP) and Democratic Front plus several independent candidates.
Those in Kimanya Kabonera include Mulinde Moses (NRM), Kisekka Samson (DP) and Moses Ssemwogerere (NUP) among others. While in Nyendo Mukungwe the candidates include DP’s Denis Lukanga Majwala, Kisekka John Johns of the People’s Front for Freedom (PFF) and Ronald Kasekende (NUP) among others.
