UGANDA'S FLAWED ELECTIONS: Free, fair or flawed? Observers give their final verdict on polls

Ballot boxes not having seals and padlocks were some of the issues raised by the observers. Today, Daily Monitor turns attention to the count and also gives the Commonwealth Observers’ final verdict.

The Count

128. The count began in most polling stations at about 2.00 p.m. on 11 December 1980 so that anticipated difficulties as to insufficient light generally did not materialise. Each party polling agent was treated as a counting agent for the purposes of the count at his polling station, so that representatives of all the parties contesting each constituency were enabled to be present, and were present, during this most important phase of the poll. Outside polling stations, hundreds of those which had voted there earlier gathered at an early hour to await the outcome.

129. Generally the count began with a joint inspection of each box to determine whether or not it had been tampered with. The first box was then opened and the votes counted and recorded before they were bundled up and placed back inside it. The first box was then securely closed before the second box was opened, and so on. As a ballot paper was not required to be marked with the party of the voter's preference, it was essential that there be no possibility of the various bundles of votes becoming mixed.

130. The inspection of the boxes included on examination of the labels to ensure that these had not been exchanged or replaced with those of other parties. As the labels had not been affixed in a uniform fashion, the possibility of this occurring without its being detected seemed to us to be slight.

Certainly during our visit to as many as 1476 polling stations no suggestion was made to us either that boxes had been tampered with or that labels had been changed. In addition, many of the boxes contained improvised labels inside, and these were required to correspond to the party labels on the outside. This was done with the agreement of all the party agents and in their presence.

131. The actual count was performed out loud and in many of the polling stations we visited the numbers were chanted in chorus by party agents and polling staff alike. Boxes were either emptied out on to mats - and the box of one party we saw turned out to be completely empty suggesting that the two polling agents appointed by it had in fact voted for another party! or, with a sense of theatre, the presiding officer removed one ballot paper at a time from the box, holding it up for all to see that it had been validated and maintaining suspense to the last. Party agents occasionally conducted their own independent count and the memory lingers of one particular party ‘polling agent who three times checked the nine votes his party had received at his station.

132. At the conclusion of the count the figures were entered on a form designed by the Electoral Commission. The agents off each party were required to countersign this return, and were in addition provided with a copy. In this way each party contesting a constituency was rendered capable of assembling its own set of returns’ from polling stations and was thus placed in a position to contest the returning officer's arithmetic should it so wish.

We regarded this provision as a most important one, and had suggested it to the Electoral Commission as a corollary of the safe guards agreed between the Military Commission and the DP in respect of an immediate count at all polling stations. The counting procedure thus had its own inbuilt checks and we observed during our visits to the polling stations that these appeared to be working well. No party polling agents made any complaints to us.

133. On the debit side we noted that the form did not provide for a formal reconciliation of used and unused ballot papers with the number of ballot papers received and the votes cast. Further, presiding officers generally either lacked seals or were not aware of the requirements that unused papers should be accounted for and sealed up separately before the count itself commenced.

However, no suggestion of impropriety was made to us in this regard. We would also note that because of the exceptionally high poll the addition of extraneous ballot papers was rendered readily detectable. An additional safeguard lay in the fact that each stamp held by a presiding officer bore a different number.

134. Because of the size of the turnout, the area for malpractice in respect of stuffing ballot boxes or of ballot box substitution was narrowed to a very fine margin, and the likelihood of detection was correspondingly high.

135. For these reasons we are satisfied that the protections ill built in to the counting process were such as to provide adequate safeguards for each of the contesting parties, and to enable them quite independently to establish whether or not any alleged irregularities actually took place.

136. Overall, our impression was that the count passed off without incident and in an orderly fashion. We were, of course unable to be present at more than a significant sample of the counts, but enquiries made of the various parties before we left; did not suggest that the situation had been otherwise where members of our Group were not present.

137. Late on the afternoon of Thursday, 11 December, we were dismayed to learn of a retrospective Proclamation made by the Chairman of the Military Commission (Annex 4). Although this document amended the electoral law in positive ways so as to legitimise the fact that polling hours had been extended and that the count had taken place at polling stations, the remainder of the Proclamation had the effect of giving to the Chairman of the Military Commission the sole power to announce results as well as the power to declare the poll in individual constituencies to be invalid. Each returning officer was enjoined to communicate the results only to the Chairman of the Military Commission, and to provide him with a confidential report on "various aspects" of the poll. The Proclamation also provided that no decision made by the chairman of the military commission could be challenged in any court of law.

138. As this Proclamation constituted a negation of the open basis on which the elections were to have been conducted, and as it rendered anyone providing results to us liable to inordinate penalties, we were forced to consider our own position.

139. We were not able to see the Chairman of the Military Commission until early the following morning. We found that in advance of our representations, he had already prepared a press statement which he had agreed with the leaders of the UPC and the DP and. which had the effect of preserving the Proclamation in force whilst authorising returning officers and the Electoral Commission to publicly announce results.

140. The Chairman explained to us that these extraordinary powers had been rendered necessary by the abysmal performance of some returning officers in distributing
materials and in opening polling stations on 10 December. He explained that he was anxious to avoid a repetition of such incompetence at the crucial stage of the conclusion of the count. We would, however, note that by" the Proclamation the Chairman was to be provided with confidential reports by these self-same returning officers which presumably were to form the basis for the exercise of his unfettered and considerable discretion. The Proclamation, and the absence of any publicly stated reasons for it, inevitably heightened tension and created a climate of suspicion and apprehension.

141. Although the press statement was made available to us, and we immediately disclosed its contents to the press, it was several hours before we could persuade the Electoral Commission to start announcing the results it had received. In this we were assisted by Brigadier Oyite Ojok, who, although a member of the Military Commission, was unaware of the press statement but was anxious to reduce growing excitement on the streets of Kampala, as both sides were by then claiming outright victory. Indeed, the DP had first claimed victory before the polls had even closed.
142. The first results were announced over Radio Uganda shortly after 2.00 p.m. on 12 December. We were present in the communication centre at this time and while results were coming to hand.

143. Earlier in the day we had debriefed all our assistants who had returned to Kampala from various parts of the country and it had become apparent to us from the reports of their observations both during the poll and at the count that the DP was publicly claiming to have won seats which it had almost certainly lost. For instance, the claim was even made of a success in Gulu, where we knew that the UPC was taking over 90 per cent of the vote. At no stage did we lend credence to claims made by the DP that they had won a clear majority. Rather we contacted the DP to advise it of the position as we understood it to be, and subsequently the DP confirmed to us that some of its information from outlying districts had been incorrect.

144. The day in Kampala ended with a barrage of gunfire from a variety of weapons. No authoritative explanation for this was forthcoming.

Conclusion

145. This has been a turbulent and troubled election, characterised by confusion, delays, intense mistrust, and in the end, a sense of wonder that it happened at all. Some, at least, of the difficulties could have mitigated, even in Uganda's situation, if the Electoral Commission had been a more efficient and imaginative body than proved to be the case; if the Military Commission had not delayed a final decision and announcement on the venue and manner of the count till just three days before polling; if there had been a mechanism for continuing consultation between the Electoral Commission and all the political parties, sitting together, to consider and resolve difficulties as they arose; and if logistical arrangements for the distribution of balloting material had been made with a greater degree of thoroughness.

146. We have expressed at some length our reservations regarding nominations and a number of the unopposed returns: without question, this is the area most open to criticism, but it is one where the courts have the power to provide redress. We would, however, add that about half the seats involved are likely to have been captured by the UPC in any event, go that despite their effect on the arithmetic, they are unlikely to have affected the outcome.

147. In the remainder of the country, despite all deficiencies the electoral process cohered and held together even if some of its individual strands were frayed. Surmounting all obstacles, the people of Uganda, like some great tidal wave, carried the, electoral process to a worthy and valid conclusion.