Inside fallout between Electoral Commission and CCEDU

Observing polls. Former presidential candidate Kizza Besigye (centre) interacts with CCEDU observers after casting his vote on May 31 in Rukungiri District. FILE PHOTO

What you need to know:

  • In the lead-up to elections which CCEDU observes, on the actual election day and immediate aftermath, CCEDU’s national coordinator Crispin Kaheru inundates journalists and social media with real-time updates of happenings.
  • During the meeting to discuss the suspension at CCEDU offices, Dr Ssewanyana informed the CCEDU members that the physical copy of the letter officially suspending them had just been delivered.

One polling station, Nyakasanga Kizungu market, was subject to two interesting incidents. In one, the police were duped into responding to a false report that there was ballot stashing in a nearby house. The police search revealed nothing.
“Yet in another (incident), vigilant CCEDU (Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda) observers discovered a ghost polling station. The ‘Upper Nyakasanga Kizungu Market polling station’ had been set up complete with ‘registers’ and ‘electoral officials’. CCEDU reported the matter to the Electoral Commission and the police. Upon confirmation that it was a phantom polling station, police responded by dismantling and confiscating the polling material.”

This is an extract from a report by CCEDU on the Kasese District Woman MP by-election that was held on August 8, 2012.
Leader of Opposition in Parliament Winnie Kiiza won the hotly contested by-election, which had been occasioned by the courts annulling her 2011 victory over “non-compliance” with electoral laws. The court petition had been filed by the ruling party’s Rehema Muhindo, who came second in the by-election, with DP’s Rosemary Masika coming a distant third.

CCEDU was launched in August 2009 and is easily the largest local outfit engaged in promoting electoral democracy. It carries out voter education and observes elections, among other things. According to its chairman, Dr Livingstone Sewanyana, CCEDU has a membership of 991 community-based organisations and 27,801 individuals, many of these individuals are retired civil servants, politicians and other individuals spread across the country.

Love-hate relationship
When it comes to observing elections, CCEDU deploys teams that include its members who have knowledge of the area, hence the ability to expose irregularities and cases of outright rigging like the one cited at the start of this article.
In the Rukungiri Woman MP by-election of May 31, for instance, CCEDU was again at the centre of controversy in which an unauthentic results declaration form was presented during tallying of results. The Electoral Commission was forced to cancel the disputed results in an election which FDC’s Betty Muzanira beat NRM’s Winnie Matsiko.

In the lead-up to elections which CCEDU observes, on the actual election day and immediate aftermath, CCEDU’s national coordinator Crispin Kaheru inundates journalists and social media with real-time updates of happenings. He reports on scenes of violence, controversy of any nature, provisional and final results immediately they are announced. He usually ends with a wrap-up of how the election went, in his view.
Mr Kaheru’s approach does not sit well with all the people at the Electoral Commission (EC). In some cases, Electoral Commission spokesperson Jotham Taremwa has lashed out at Mr Kaheru on Twitter, claiming that Mr Kaheru’s job is to observe elections and not to give real-time updates to the public.

On a number of occasions, Dr Sewanyana says, EC officials have castigated CCEDU for being “partisan” in the way they observe elections and conduct voter education. For their role in unveiling the phantom polling station in Kasese and highlighting the forged results declaration form in Rukungiri, Dr Sewanyana says, EC officials remarked to them that they were being partisan.
When they launched voter education and mobilisation campaigns dubbed “Topowa” and “Votability” to mobilise citizens to register and vote in previous elections, Dr Sewanyana says, EC officials first objected to the drives, describing them as “partisan”, before embracing them.
On a few other occasions, Dr Sewanyana says, the EC has commended CCEDU for being “impartial”.

CCEDU suspended
Dr Ssewanyana said this during an emergency meeting of CCEDU members held at their headquarters in Nsambya, Kampala, on Thursday. The meeting was called to discuss a suspension of CCEDU’s voter education and election observation functions by the EC.

In charge of polls. Electoral Commission secretary Sam Rwakoojo (left) and EC chairperson Simon Byabakama appear before Parliament last year. FILE PHOTO


On July 4, EC spokesperson Taremwa posted on his personal Twitter account a two-page letter indicating that the Commission had suspended CCEDU as a partner in conducting voter education and observing the LCI elections that were then going on, and future elections.

In the letter communicating the suspension, dated July 4, EC chairperson Simon Byabakama said the Commission had met with a team from CCEDU to discuss their application for accreditation and raised some issues.
“… the Commission expressed its concern about the partisan manner in which CCEDU has been conducting itself in the past elections,” Justice Byabakama said, which he said contravenes provisions of the Electoral Commission Act.

Justice Byabakama stated the problem thus: “On the morning of July 4, 2018, a senior CCEDU communications official, who was also in the meeting with the Commission on July 2, 2018, Ms Charity Ahimbisibwe, while on NBS’s Morning Breeze – Topical Discussion segment, castigated the countrywide village women council/committee elections that took place on July 3, 2018, as a sham. This was contrary to the big turn up registered countrywide and the public interest and yearning to have these council/committee elections conducted after such a long time.”

The letter continued: “CCEDU has among others proved that it does not adhere to the legal framework and guidelines of the Electoral Commission and thus we are sceptical that it is in position to comply with objective voter education geared at promoting a process it does not believe in.”
During the meeting to discuss the suspension at CCEDU offices, Dr Ssewanyana informed the CCEDU members that the physical copy of the letter officially suspending them had just been delivered. This was July 12, eight days after the suspension was announced on Twitter on July 4.
Mr Taremwa tagged Mr Kaheru in the tweet to which the letter was attached. Mr Kaheru would later tell the meeting that he first learnt of the suspension from a journalist who called him about it after seeing the letter posted on Twitter.

More controversy
As the meeting progressed, some online publications reported that CCEDU had “apologised” to the EC over the incident and posted a copy of a letter to that effect, written on CCEDU’s official letterhead and bearing Mr Kaheru’s signature.
Asked on Thursday whether the letter in which CCEDU “regrets” the words attributed to its official on the television programme is authentic, Mr Kaheru said: “Think about it, how would we have already responded to a letter which we have only received today?”
At the CCEDU meeting in Nsambya, there were representatives from the embassies of Norway and the United States, the Democratic Governance Facility, among others. None of the representatives of donor countries or agencies spoke.

The discussions were charged, many angry at the suspension. Former Rubaga South MP Ken Lukyamuzi, for instance, citing Article One of the Constitution that vests power in the people, said the suspension is illegal and should not be respected. He said CCEDU doesn’t need accreditation to monitor elections because it is made up of Ugandans, and that any Ugandan is free to monitor elections.
Different speakers took aim at Justice Byabakama, the chairperson of EC, accusing him of being partisan, the same charge the EC is throwing at CCEDU.

Election. A woman casts her vote in Kampala during the 2016 presidential elections. FILE PHOTO

Jinja Municipality East MP Paul Mwiru, an FDC MP who has gone to Parliament after two by-elections in the current and last term, accused EC officials of manipulating election results and wrongly declaring ruling party candidates as winners.
“The standard response they give you when you complain is ‘go to court’,” Mr Mwiru said.
Mr Mwiru said he suffered so much at the hands of the Electoral Commission that one day he ran into former EC chairman Badru Kiggundu walking in town and refused to greet him despite Dr Kiggundu’s overtures. He warned that if Justice Byabakama continues the way the Electoral Commission is going, it will not be long before some of the players in the political space shun him too.

Apart from suspending CCEDU, the EC recently came under fire over the removal of an FDC candidate from the race for the Pallisa District Woman MP by-election, declaring the NRM candidate elected unopposed.
Dr Gerard Siranda, the acting secretary general of DP, said at the gathering that they brought to the attention of the Electoral Commission irregularities in the nomination of an NRM candidate in Mityana but they were ignored. “As usual we were advised to go to court,” Dr Siranda said. He also placed the blame at the feet of Justice Byabakama, just like FDC assistant secretary general Harold Kaija did.

When the attacks on Justice Byabakama became too many, Mr Wandera Ogalo, the lead lawyer in CCEDU’s petition against lining up in LCI elections, jumped to his defence. Mr Ogalo said he was the deputy chairperson of the parliamentary committee that considered the Electoral Commission Act in 1997, under the leadership of now Vice President Edward Ssekandi.
Mr Ogalo said that they set up the Electoral Commission to reach decisions by consensus or by voting, and that once a decision is taken every member of the Commission is bound by them. He said therefore it makes more sense to blame the decisions on the seven-member Commission instead of heaping all the blame on just Justice Byabakama, the chairman.

LC I elections
The animated debate quite often drifted into the recent women council elections, although it mostly focused on the LCI elections that happened this week. CCEDU in October 2010 filed a petition challenging the method of lining up behind candidates in the Constitutional Court, but it had not been heard by the time the elections took place.
Going into the LCI elections, therefore, CCEDU’s position was challenging. Would it go to observe elections whose method of execution it was challenging in court, or would it just sit and wait until the court would hear its petition.

CCEDU in the end sent out a team, whose mandate was looked at more as gathering information which could potentially be used as supplementary evidence to support the petition against lining up during voting and not to just observe the election.
The EC, our information indicates, got jittery at this development and decided to act by suspending CCEDU’s activities.

History
Love-hate relationship
When it comes to observing elections, CCEDU deploys teams that include its members who have knowledge of the area, hence the ability to expose irregularities and cases of outright rigging like the one cited at the start of this article.
In the Rukungiri Woman MP by-election of May 31, for instance, CCEDU was again at the centre of controversy in which an unauthentic results declaration form was presented during tallying of results. The Electoral Commission was forced to cancel the disputed results in an election which FDC’s Betty Muzanira beat NRM’s Winnie Matsiko.

July 10 Resolutions

Resolutions. The meeting decided to do the following in light of the suspension
• Petition EC to review its decision to suspend CCEDU
• Petition Parliament over the suspension (CCEDU said it had already collected 3000 signatures to support the petition)
• Petition the courts of law (Mr Wandera Ogalo was assigned to do it)
• Apart from those three resolutions, the CCEDU members also resolved to “take the issue in the court of public opinion”.

emukiibi@u’nationmedia.com