UGANDA'S FLAWED ELECTIONS: In defence of UPC, Observers report and Muwanga

In yesterday’s series, Francis Bwengye was spitting fire at the Military Commission and the Commonwealth Observers report for messing up and misrepresenting the election. Today, UPC’s Yonah Kanyomozi tells Daily Monitor’s Emmanuel Gyezaho why he thinks his party won the disputed 1980 general elections.

Q: In your heart of hearts, do you believe the UPC won that election fairly?

A: I think UPC won the 1980 elections. The question of fairly is a bit subjective. There were some flaws in some places but on the whole as the CommonWealth Observer Team said, on the whole the election of 1980 reflected the wishes of the people of Uganda. Because you cannot say the UPC rigged here and rigged there. If they were rigging and there was general rigging, they should have done it in Buganda. In Buganda we virtually lost the whole place. So it cant have been selective. Secondly rigging elections starts at the time of registration or even before. In the making of election laws at the time, the UPC wasn’t in power. The people who were in power were the late Muwanga.

Yes Muwanga was the Chairman of the Military Commission. His Vice Chairman was Yoweri Museveni and a host of all these other people who were ministers including myself because I was in the Military Commission as an economic advisor to the Military Commission. So if there was any rigging, we should have been the ones to do it. Secondly I don’t see anybody wanting to rig himself out of elections.

The President himself now, the present president was defeated in Nyabushozi by non other than Sam Kutesa. He was number three in those elections.

Thirdly there were certain things, which happened which became funny. For example the DP’s started announcing elections of areas even where we hadn’t voted because materials hadn’t arrived.

In my own constituency, Bushenyi South as it was then called, which is now present Rushenyi and Kajara, elections did not take place on the 10th. We elected on the 11th and yet on radio Kigali and BBC, I had been defeated even before we elected.

I think there was an over enthusiasm. The other thing is, when the elections were over, when this government came in power in 1986, people tried to instigate and inquire from the DP whether they had a case which could pin the UPC down and these people were not willing to come up with any information that was saying the UPC rigged the elections.

They didn’t. Justice George Kanyeihamba was sometime quoted as saying that they tried to get that information even when they were outside the country in those four years that we were in power so that they would influence the British Government. The parties which were here, especially DP, never produced any evidence that was credible enough to deny the UPC victory at that time.

Q: What about the various election anomalies especially at the Nomination stages? There were reports of road blocks held to prevent non-UPC candidates from getting to nomination centres in Moyo and Arua. Chango Macho was barred because he didn’t present a certificate of proficiency in English yet he was a University lecturer. Was this not all in UPC’s favour?

A: No, not necessarily. Because when you are going for elections you must first make sure that you are very careful. You look at the law; take everything they want even if you are a professor. If they say we want a certificate although you have been known as a professor, you will get there and they
will say, well Prof so and so, sorry you have not presented your papers, and that is what happened to Chango Macho.

Actually Chango Macho did not go with the relevant papers to help him and I gather the irony of fate is that the man who was in chair was actually a student he had taught. So it doesn’t matter, you follow the law. In Arua, there are circumstances, which I have never understood fully. But even from the Common Wealth report, there are anomalies of people not presenting the very requirements that the Electoral Commission wanted and mark you, the Secretary of the Electoral Commission, Mr Vincent Ssekono (Now Permanent Secretary Local Government Ministry) had been actually head hunted by the DP to go into that place.

The late Gasasira, who was the permanent secretary, if he was here would tell you. He was head hunted and put into that position and he (Ssekono) would have actually stopped those anomalies since he was in position to do so as a secretary or influence the Chairman and say, no this was wrong. But Ssekono did not even raise a finger at that time. And you can’t say he was stopped because, the UPC was not yet in power, and the Military Commission was. So these are the things that people need to understand. I am not saying that there were no flaws. There might have been flaws here and there but they were not going to change the situation. These would not have stopped the UPC from winning.

Q: UPC got at least 16 unopposed seats amid serious claims of electoral malpractice. Did UPC get these seats unfairly?

A: Of the 16 lets take a look at those in Lango sub region. Whether they were there or not, they would have gone to UPC anyway.