Tuesday February 28 was voting day in parliament, as legislators chose Uganda’s representatives in the East African Legislative Assembly.
After chaotic campaigns characterized by booing, heckling and chanting, MPs got down to the exercise. Each of the nearly 400 voters picked a ballot paper, ticked nine names, and slipped the record into a box, before having a finger marked with ink to minimise the risk of multiple voting.
This was promptly followed by a tedious tallying monotony, where a polling officer picked each ballot paper and read each of the nine names out loud. It was 9:30pm before the final results were announced, ending another long and eventful day in the life of Uganda’s 10th parliament.
We congratulate our MPs for dispensing of this duty under Article 50 of The Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community. However, we believe that in the year 2017, in the period of hakuna mchezo, in the soon-to-be middle-income republic of Uganda, our parliament can and should embrace technology.
We know that the leadership of parliament has been passionate about things like electronic voting and bill-tracking systems; it is, therefore, curious why the institution can’t get these things up and running.
A proper, secure, confidential electronic voting system would have given Ugandans results in a much shorter time and allowed the country to move on to other important tasks.
But even beyond time considerations, we recently witnessed NRM legislators nearly beat up their electoral commission chairman over the reading of ballot papers. Technology would all but preclude such absurdities.
And the bill-tracking system would allow the public and MPs to monitor the movement of bills, which would give the country an opportunity to monitor and evaluate parliament’s actions. The speaker has spoken keenly about taking parliament to the people; getting such a system working should be seen in that light.
Some might argue that electronic voting comes with risks – as the Americans recently found out – but in such a controlled environment, parliament should be able to get a secure system.
In the end, all systems have risks, but progressive societies invest in improving safety and security, rather than letting risk stifle technological innovation and ambition.