How NRM will vote today

BY ARTHUR ARNOLD WADERO

The National Resistance Movement (NRM) electoral commission (EC) has explained how the party primaries for Woman and constituent MPs will be done in the voting today.
The deputy chairperson of NRM EC, Mr John Arimpa, said voters in the recently created constituencies by Parliament would vote in their original venues prior to the creation of the new electoral areas.
“We are using the 68,742 villages. The newly added villages by the national Electoral Commission on the 14th of this month will vote in their old villages. Although they are gazetted, no list was raised for them,” Mr Arimpa told Daily Monitor yesterday.

Strict on Covid SOPs
Mr Arimpa said the voting exercise will be done with strict adherence to the Ministry of Health Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on social distancing to guard against the spread of Covid-19.
Mr Arimpa said only eligible voters will be allowed to access polling venues.
“As people arrive they will wash their hands, they have facemasks on and they will go and line behind the candidates’ pictures or their agents,” Mr Arimpa said.
He said where voter numbers are overwhelming, voting will be conducted in bigger spaces such as playgrounds.
“When they are lining behind the posters of their candidate, they observe the two-metre distance. Most villages don’t have more than 150 voters except the exceptional ones which are not many,” Mr Arimpa said. “For those exceptional villages, the lining up will be at the pitch. If the line is long, it can even make a curve,” he added.

Voting method
The NRM electoral commission said the voting would be start at 10am and be concluded at 3pm with the declaration of results done by the party returning officers at village level.
“The actual voting will be done between 11am and 3pm, starting with election of candidates for District Woman MPs and then followed by the election of candidates for constituent seats. The voters will converge at 10am to be given civic education on how they are going to handle themselves. Then by 11am, they will start voting after checking their names,” Mr Arimpa said.

Results
Contestants are tasked to present agents or posters behind whom their voters will line up and be ‘loudly’ counted to ensure transparency.
Mr Arimpa said the outcome of the elections will be monitored and tracked at two points; village level where voting is done and later at district level for comprehensive tallying before they are transmitted to the party EC headquarters on Kyadondo Road in Kampala.
“Once counting is done, the results will be entered in the DR (Declaration of Results) form and each candidate’s agent in that village will get a copy of that form,” he said.
The party EC chairperson, Mr Tanga Odoi, said only the electoral commission headquarters in Kampala will confirm the results announced at the district level.
“The results will be declared at two points. We shall declare at the village level which is the polling station and at the district. No declaration will be made at the sub-county. So all those who are fighting to control the sub-counties thinking they are going to release results, that’s not going to happen,” Mr Odoi said.
He added: “Confirmation will be at the centre here. You can declare a wrong person, we can still cancel that person at the centre here [Kampala]. There is no other place for declaration except here which will give the final verdict to all members of the party.”

Security
Mr Odoi said the district security personnel will oversee the election and will be supervised by the Resident District Commissioners. These are expected to work in conjunction with District Internal Security Officers, district police commanders and other security agencies. He warned candidates not to have personal security officers at the voting venues.

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