Kiggundu urges women to expose poll cheats
Electoral Commission chairperson Badru Kiggundu joins women at the launch of the Women Situation Room at the Golf Course Hotel in Kampala last Thursday. PHOTO BY STEPHEN OTAGE
What you need to know:
While launching the Women Reporting Situation Room last Thursday, Dr Kiggundu said: “I do not know what we would have done without mothers and women. They are the ones from whom we came to earth and they have the power to restrain their children and spouses from going out to cause chaos.
Kampala.
The Electoral Commission boss, Dr Badru Kiggundu, has asked women around the country to use their numerical and motherly strengths to note down perpetrators of cheating in elections and report them to authorities.
While launching the Women Reporting Situation Room last Thursday, Dr Kiggundu said: “I do not know what we would have done without mothers and women. They are the ones from whom we came to earth and they have the power to restrain their children and spouses from going out to cause chaos.”
He added that it is unfortunate that women have always remained quiet when they see things going astray and yet they could have mitigated them.
“Women are very powerful people in their softness and gentility. They have hidden power to create peace which is the bedrock of development without which the economy cannot do anything,” he said.
Mitigation
According to Patricia Babiiha Munaabi the executive director Forum for Women in Democracy, the Uganda Women’s’ Situation Room is a mechanism copied from Liberia where women and youth participate in mitigating election violence by carrying out activities which promote peace during elections as well as observing and reporting acts that breed violence to a command centre comprising eminent women from Uganda and Africa.
“We shall have lawyers, communication specialists, data analysts who will be able to decipher the information and call the necessary officials to go and resolve the issues wherever the incidents are reported,” she said adding that there are 15 districts in the country where violence is anticipated to happen and this is where the teams have been deployed.
The situation room
She explained that the Situation Room is mirrored from a war situation where commanders are situated in one room where they keep getting reports from the field about the incidents that are happening so that they can respond as they appear. She said in this case, it will be composed of election observing missions that will be located at the Sheraton Hotel.
