Donors, EC disagree over results gadgets

EC Chairman Dr Badiru Kiggundu. File Photo

What you need to know:

Reason. The chairperson of DGF’s steering committee, Ms Mads Mayerhofer, said their contract was cancelled under suspicious circumstances

Kampala.

The Electoral Commission says they have already procured results transmission kits for the February 18 polls despite a major co-sponsor for the project denying the commission funding.
The Democratic Governance Facility (DGF), which had earlier committed to support half of the Shs 9 billion procuring of Electronic Results Transmission and Dissemination System (ERTDS), pulled out citing irregularities in the procurement process of the project.

“Government of Uganda fully funds our budget. However, if a development partner decides to supplement government and provides the Electoral Commission support, it’s always welcome. What I want to confirm is that EC has already procured ERTDS,” EC spokesman Jotham Taremwa said in an interview with Daily Monitor.

In an interview with Uganda Radio Network (URN), Mads Mayerhofer, the chairperson of DGF’s Steering Committee, said their decision was prompted by EC’s cancelling of the contract that had been awarded to Cytel in favour of Avante, under suspicious circumstances.

“After careful consideration, DGF decided that the last-minute decision to change provider raised concern as to the transparency of the procurement process as well as the timely implementation of the ERTDS itself,” Ms Mayerhofer told URN.
However, Mr Sam Rwakoojo, the EC Secretary, told Daily Monitor yesterday that EC had cancelled Cytel’s contract after it failed to follow the agreed on procedure.

“When the company came here, they failed to adhere to what was agreed on in the contract. Their proposal was to send the results to some central location before sending them to us in Namboole and we couldn’t allow that,” he said.

Mr Rwakoojo said that the support from DGF and other developing partners was welcome but maintained elections were a business of the Uganda government.

Then called Deepening Democracy Programme, DGF in 2011 funded the programmme which enabled Returning Officers send the results of each particular candidate to the National Tallying Centre in Kampala within the 48 hours specified by the law.

With just 24 days left to the February 18 presidential, EC’s preparedness for the exercise has come into question with several activities being done at the last minute.

Just last week, the commission unveiled a biometric system to verify voters during the presidential elections and subsequent polls amid concerns by stakeholders about its timing and applicability.
EC officials, however, maintain they are more than ready to execute the job.

How it works

After completion of counting at polling stations, results forms are delivered to District Tally Centres (DTCs), either by polling station Presiding Officers or by sub-county supervisors. At DTCs, Returning Officers oversee the tallying of election results.
Tallying is then carried out through the Electronic Results Transmission and Dissemination System (ETRDS), according to which data is double-entered for each election and Declaration of Results Forms scanned. Both results and scanned forms are then transmitted electronically to the National Tally Centre (NTC).
According to the EU EOM report, although the ETRDS enabled swift transmission of results once entered, party agents and observers had difficulty viewing the data entry process in one third of cases and the process took several days in many cases. In 40 per cent of cases, EU EOM observers assessed the process at DTCs to be poor or very poor, and good or very good in 60 per cent of cases.