It is only NRM that can organise grassroots elections

Last week, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) held primaries to elect flag bearers who will compete in the parliamentary and local government elections. There were reported cases of malpractices and the media called it a mess. I disagree. While I acknowledge that the NRM electoral commission should have organised better elections, I know that organising universal suffrage elections at village level is not easy with limited resources.

The national Electoral Commission is going to spend over Shs200 billion in the general elections. NRM doesn’t have that kind of money for its internal elections. What was expected was cooperation among NRM members to ensure a smooth internal election. However, many of the problems were caused by the very people who were supposed to guard against them.

For instance, the branch leaders are responsible for registration of NRM members in accordance with the NRM constitution. In some cases, there were reports of inflation of the NRM register. If the branch is responsible for registration of members in a village, how come there were people on the registers who were not supposed to be there? In any case, the register was sent to the branch chairpersons for display. How come they didn’t remove “ghost’ members? NRM will be strong if all the leaders at various levels do their part.

The last thing one should expect is a bloated NRM register because NRM leaders are expected to have a spirit of their organisation and therefore, keeping a proper record of members at the branch level is a cardinal requirement of any branch chairperson. It’s only the branch that has powers to register and keep record of NRM members at the village level.

A district NRM chairperson has no powers to register a member. Also, a member cannot be registered at any other level other than the branch where that person lives or is born. So, the complaints that some names were removed and wrong ones inserted in the register is for the NRM chairpersons at the village level to address. The village is the branch in the NRM constitution.

The problems that were encountered in the primaries notwithstanding, the struggle by politicians to become NRM flag bearers is an indication that NRM is the party most Ugandans identify with. This is a very good opinion poll, if I may call it so. Many other parties have attempted to hold village elections but they flopped. It’s only NRM that can hold elections in each village of Uganda. So those who are monitoring elections in Uganda, take the NRM primaries as a good lead as to who will win the 2011.

On the other hand, the opposition is busy complaining about the Electoral Commission. During a political debate at the Uganda North America Association convention last Friday, Speaker Edward Sekandi explained that the commissioners cannot be removed by an administrative statement. Even the President has no powers to remove members of the Electoral Commission.

If one was to remove the commissioners, then the Constitution has to be amended. He further explained in response to the question about the commission that the time left before the general election was short to amend the Constitution to change membership of the Electoral Commission because constitutionally, presidential elections must be held between February 12 and March 11.

Failure to comply with the above constitutional requirement would require amending the Constitution (Art. 105 (1)) and extend the term of the current government from ending on May 11, 2011. Amendment can only be effected through a referendum organised by the Electoral Commission! What we all want and what we should demand is a transparent electoral process.

Mr Byaruhanga is a special presidential assistant on political affairs
political@infocom.co.ug