The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Wakiso, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The tallying of votes from Wakiso’s recently concluded municipal elections has descended into chaos, marked by slow progress, emotional outbursts, heated arguments, physical scuffles, and raw anger.
When the tally centre opened on Tuesday evening, several candidates, most of them from the National Unity Platform (NUP), arrived confident of victory. They carried stacks of Declaration of Results (DR) forms collected from their polling agents, documents they believed proved they had won their seats.
As officials began reading out and declaring winners on Wednesday morning, the mood shifted dramatically. One candidate after another was left stunned, insisting the people being announced had not actually won.
“Those being declared didn’t win. We are being rigged in broad daylight,” said Emmanuel Kiyingi, the NUP candidate for Wamala Ward electoral area.
His voice carried the frustration shared by many others in the room. The scene turned to one of growing outrage. Candidates shouted over each other, some breaking down in tears, others exchanging sharp words with officials and rival supporters.
At this time, the military police and police personnel deployed inside the tally centre started fishing out NUP candidates who were complaining and throwing them out.
“I have the DR forms, and what is being read doesn’t reflect what is on the DR forms,” Immaculate Namanda, one of the aggrieved candidates, cried out, her voice breaking amid the chaos. Before she could protest further, over ten security personnel, mostly men. Namanda was a candidate for Wamala Ward. She claimed to have won the race, but the returning officer declared NRM’s Annet Kobusingye.
Emmanuel Kiyingi of the National Unity Platform accused officials of reading fake results and warned the Wakiso Returning Officer, Tolbert Musinguzi.He warned that the move risked bloodshed in communities where supporters had already celebrated based on DR forms from polling stations. He said the tally did not reflect the figures on the ground.
Hamuza Kasozi, a candidate in Maganjo One, pointed to an intimidating environment at the centre. He cited police officers crowding the room and blocking candidates from registering complaints. Kasozi demanded a fair process where each candidate would table copies of the DR forms issued the previous evening.
When opposition candidates pushed for verification, NRM councillors objected. They said they lacked DR forms themselves, which prompted questions about how they claimed victory without the documents.
National Unity Platform candidate for the Nansana mayoral seat, John Bosco Sserunkuma, took a more proactive stance. Armed with a box containing DR forms, Sserunkuma demanded that results from each polling station be read aloud, one by one.
As the returning officer read out the result, Sserunkuma cross-checked against his copies, his face growing increasingly grim. “They have changed the results,” he lamented. In several instances, his main challenger, NRM’s Hamidu Nsubuga Kizito, was credited with hundreds of votes at stations where, per Sserunkuma’s agent-supplied DR forms, turnout barely exceeded 100. These “mysterious votes,” as Sserunkuma described them, appeared to inflate Kizito’s tally out of thin air.
After hearing complaints from several candidates, Returning Officer Tolbert Musinguzi said he would read the winners based on the DR forms in his possession. If any candidate raised an objection, that electoral area would be set aside, and they would proceed to the next.
He read several winners from Nabweru Division, mostly from the NRM. NUP candidates stood up in protest, and Nabweru was halted. The same sequence was repeated when tallying moved to Nansana Division. Musinguzi left Nansana Municipality after declaring only a handful of councillors and shifted to Kira Municipality. By the time of filing this story, officials had begun the process of announcing results for Kira.
The disputes match earlier complaints from the LC V tally. DR forms, signed at polling stations to record vote counts, are intended to provide a final and accurate account of results.
Last week, LCV candidate Nasiif Najja compiled figures from DR forms collected by his agents and calculated a lead of about four thousand votes. When the official declaration came, NRM’s Ian Kyeyune was announced the winner, leaving Najja and his supporters questioning the process.
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