Why can’t we have nice things like…free and fair elections?

In November 2014, the Uganda National NGO Forum launched a wonderful booklet titled Uganda Citizens’ Compact on Free and Fair Elections.

A most wonderful booklet that sought to capture the breadth and depth of the electoral reforms to deliver free and fair elections towards sustainable and peaceful political transitions.

The electoral reforms arose out of a national consultative process that drew in “the Coordinating Team for the Free and Fair Elections Campaign, the Citizens Coalition on Electoral Democracy (CCEDU), the Interparty Political Organizations for Dialogue (IPOD), the Electoral Commission (EC), the National Consultative Forum (NCF), the Cabinet, the Citizens’ Manifesto process and other concerned Ugandans,” reported the NGO Forum.

The proposals were bold, as bold as random people on social media waking up and choosing violence over the most mundane posts just because they can. As audacious as impunity!

The proposals included: establish a new and independent electoral body whose commissioners and staff would be selected by open applications and public hearings (subject to parliamentary and presidential approvals); a comprehensive and continuous civic education programme; zero involvement of the military in elections, even having the president relinquish the Commander- In-Chief position to the Joint Chiefs; establishment of an Independent Security Services Commission to oversee reforms in the security sector; institute controls to track public expenditure and prevent diversion of public funds including restriction of supplementary budget requests, State House and Presidency budgets; banning the presidency from creating new political offices without parliamentary approval in the last year of the final term of the Presidency; abolish the simultaneous holding of MP and cabinet positions – if one is appointed a minister, he/she should relinquish the MP seat; abolish the patriotism department in the presidency and incorporate patriotism into the education curriculum; disestablish the office of Resident District Commissioner and the National Leadership Institute at Kyankwanzi (which the booklet refers to as ‘NRM Political School’); reduce the size of parliament; repeal the Public Order Management Act and amend The Police (Amendment) Act (2006) aligning it with Chapter Four of the Constitution; set up transparent and merit-based recruitment of presiding officers; permit media to report in real time certified results from polling stations; removal of army representation in parliament; and lastly, the big guns – restore the presidential term limits.

Dear reader, I warned you, this was/is a wonderfully bold booklet. At the time, the drafters dared to fantasize that the proposals would be in time for the 2016 elections. Well, here we are, 10 years and growing, looking back at this 2014 booklet and asking ourselves, ‘Why can’t we have nice things?’

Increasingly, the Ugandan voter is drawing back from elections. Voter turnout is declining steadily, especially in urban centres. According to Electoral Commission (EC) statistics, the 1996 election (before the multiparty system) registered the highest voter turnout at 72 per cent, dropping to 70 per cent in 2001, 68 per cent in 2006, 59 per cent in 2011, climbed to 63 per cent in 2016, and dropped to 57 per cent in 2021.

After the 2021 election, the EC announced a study to interrogate why eight million Ugandans/voters stayed away from the polls (unfortunately, I could not find any public information about the EC’s findings).

In December 2020, while on a tour of the breathtaking Queen Elizabeth National Park, our tour guide, a cheerful and energetic chap from Western Uganda, expertly steered our tourist van to a cluster of trees in which two leopards lay languidly watching us.

The tour guide enthralled us with interesting bits and pieces about the leopards as he directed us to close the car windows and keep the children away from the window seats. He nonchalantly commented that leopards had been known to snack on children.

At the end of the tour, as we drove out of the park (much to the children’s relief ), the talk swung to the ‘exciting’ politics of the day (in the aftermath of the November 2020 killings). The tour guide shared he was looking forward to polling day as it would give him a chance to visit his family in the village.

He reiterated that he had last voted in 2006 and had no intention of ever voting again! As intrepid as arrogant ignorance warmly ensconced its echo chamber, I climbed onto my high horse to lecture him on why he should do his civic duty of voting. The cheer on his face was replaced by an unyielding look as he disclosed his foray into the tourism industry.

He revealed that as a young man, he was ankle-deep in politics in the heady days of the origins of Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and its precursor, Reform Agenda. Brimming with patriotism, the 2006 election found him deep in the backwaters of Rukungiri district, home of the FDC presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye.

Today, we would refer to him as an opposition ‘foot soldier’. For a quick introduction to the audacity of impunity, refer to the 2006 Supreme court ruling on Besigye’s petition challenging the presidential election. It was not pretty.

The tour guide described how army vehicles rolled into the polling station, bundled him and his patriotism into their vehicle. While in the custody of the state, he received the starter pack of the premium package reserved for opposition supporters. He quietens about his time in custody, especially how difficult it was for him to eventually get word to FDC top honchos about his predicament.

A soldier told him, “We can make you disappear, and no one would know where to even start to look for you.” Upon his release, the soldier’s ‘wise counsel’ and his stay in custody had him rethink his patriotism. Thus, he decided to stick to looking after his ailing mother and family, and “leave Uganda alone.”

In that anecdote, our tour guide disabused my ignorance of how nuanced voter apathy is. One friend who exercises his civic duty by choosing not to vote jokes that he has given up on Uganda for the next 100 years. While appearing before the parliament’s Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee, the EC chair, Justice Simon Byabakama, expressed concern over the falling voter turnout despite the increase in voters every election cycle.

The EC chair was particularly frustrated that the EC spends billions on electoral materials, which go to waste when voters do not turn up. Byabakama argued that intimidation cannot be the only reason voters are staying away from the polls. Thus, he proposed mandatory voting.

A few moments later, the EC chair acknowledged that his staff had been made to record statements in an ongoing investigation as to why the National Resistance Movement (NRM) lost that election. As parliamentarians pressed him about the 2026 election, the EC chair assured them that it will be free and fair.

In short, it was an intricate dance of exquisite pussyfooting. Dear reader, ahead of the Kawempe election, even as the state lobbed premium violence at the opposition rallies, the EC chair had also assured the public of a free and fair election. On NTV’s Facebook post about the EC chair’s proposal on mandatory voting, there is barely any support for it.

One comment reads, “We are tired of voting, we vote what we want and then you declare what you want.” Another rants, “…to vote and willingly not voting (sic) are rights of a citizen. Stop turning the country into a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.”

Interestingly, when we revisit the 2014 electoral reform proposals, there is nary a breath about mandatory voting. Bring back the euphoria of 2014 when we believed we could despite the intransigence of the incumbent NRM regime.

To be fair to the ruling NRM regime, out of the excitement of the 2014 electoral reform hype, the regime did enact one reform – they changed the name of the EC to include the word ‘Independent’.

With the dark mask of the state brutality hovering over the recent Kawempe North by-election, it is a serious let-down that the INDEPENDENT ELECTORAL COMMISSION is not shouting from the rooftops about the madness staring right at us – the need for bold and comprehensive electoral reforms.

Yes, mandatory voting is a positive step towards countering voter apathy, but without extensive political and electoral reforms, we would be simply making it mandatory to languidly relax in trees like those leopards with a soft spot for small, soft-skinned, defenseless humans – the president’s ‘bazzukulu’.

smugmountain@gmail.com

The writer is a tayaad muzzukulu