MP Nambooze Wants Electoral Commission Officials Resign For Organising Elections In Non Existent Constituencies
December 31, 2019
The Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze has demanded for the resignation of the senior officials of the Electoral Commission for organising elections in non existent constituencies.
Her comments came shortly after the Constitutional Court in Kampala threw out six MPs after ruling that they had illegally been elected into the August House.
These MPs include Patrick Ochan (Apac, UPC party), Elioda Tumwesigye (Sheema, NRM party), Tarsis Rwaburindore (Ibanda, NRM party), Hashim Sulaiman (Nebbi, NRM party), Asuman Basalirwa (Bugiri, Jeema party) and Abraham Lokii (Kotido, NRM party) were elected to parliament in non-existent constituents.
Addressing the media, Nambooze said in 2015 she cited irregularities during the creation of new constituencies and electoral areas but parliament and the electoral commission didn’t heed her advice.
“If parliament declared a place a district, it does not automatically translate into a constituency. When it comes to by-elections, they are only a result of a vacancy created in parliament,”she said.
She stressed that the senior electoral officials must resign for making people to participate in elections in non existent constituencies.
“[Simon] Byabakama… if he is a man worthy of his name, he should resign. You can’t take a country into elections that don’t exist. He is the custodian of electoral laws, he is the person who should tell us that we are not supposed to have an election here,”she said.
She expressed her concern that a lot of resources were spent by the contestants during these elections.
“What we need to do is to compensate them, not only those who went through, but whoever participated in that election. Even those who didn’t go through should be compensated for having gone through an exercise that did not exist,”she said.
She apologized on behalf of opposition for failing to check the government on this particular issue.
She noted that it was unfair for the opposition to leave Ugandans to invest their hope in elections that were not supposed to take place.
She said the EC should reorganise electoral areas and properly demarcate them to avoid such incidents to happen again in the future.
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