Where 2021 polls will be won, lost

The political temperature in the country is rising as more than 17 million registered voters prepare to go to the polls in five months’ time to elect their leaders.
The Justice Simon Byakama-led Electoral Commission (EC) is organising the first virtual election, and has already finalised the nomination of candidates in the Special Interest Groups (SIPs) elections.

From October 12 to October13, the EC will nominate candidates for parliamentary elections. The presidential candidates will be nominated from November 2 to November 3. The government banned open rallies as a safety measure to avert the spread of the novel coronavirus.

President Museveni was recently cleared to run as a sole candidate for the National Resistance Movement (NRM) after the party nomination process ended without any competitor showing up. The party’s supreme organ - the Central Executive Committee (CEC) - convenes today at State House Entebbe to plan for the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the National Conference.

In December 2017, Parliament amended the Constitution to remove the age limit that would have blocked Mr Museveni, who will be 75 next month, from running for the sixth elective term.

For the last four previous elections, Mr Museveni’s closest rival has been his former Bush War physician, Dr Kizza Besigye, who has been running on the ticket of the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Dr Besigye has kept his supporters guessing as he ponders on the next move ahead of the 2021 polls.

The arrival of musician-cum politician Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine means that the incumbent now has a relatively different challenge as the new political icon seems to have dug into the disgruntled urban poor youth. This is the cluster Mr Museveni calls grandchildren [bazzukulu in Luganda]. Bobi Wine will be running under his National Unity Platform (NUP) party.

Former army commander Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu of Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) party, and former spy master Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde, expected to run as an independent, are among the at least 50 people that have expressed interest to challenge Mr Museveni. However, there is a loose-fitting plan for a joint Opposition candidate in the run up to the General Election.

An opinion poll conducted before the Covid-19 lockdown and released this week put Mr Museveni ahead of his main political rivals, with 47 per cent of respondents saying they would vote for him. Another 22 per cent said they would have voted for Bobi Wine and Dr Besigye would come third with 17 per cent.

The findings are contained in the Uganda Governance Pulse, a new opinion poll conducted by Research World International, a local polling firm, on behalf of the Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies, a local think-tank, and the Independent Expert Peer Group of policy and public analysts.

But as the country heads into the elections, Daily Monitor assesses where the 2021 elections might be won and lost and the issues at stake.

Demographics
With the medium age of 16.7 years, Uganda remains one of the youngest populations in the world and, there is an expectation that a large number of the 17.7m voters on the national register will turn up to cast their votes next year.

At least 4,948,067 voters of the total 15,277,198 on the national roll turned out for the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2016. Mr Museveni won the race with 5,971,872 votes, accounting for 60.62 per cent, beating his rival Dr Besigye who garnered 3,508,687 votes with 35.61 per cent.

Dr Besigye rejected the results, calling for an international audit of the process but later swore himself in and has been running what he calls a “Peoples’ Government”. There were six other candidates, including former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi.
During the 2011 presidential elections, Mr Museveni garnered 5,428,369 votes amounting to 68.38 per cent of the total votes cast, defeating Dr Besigye who got 2,064,963 with 26.01 per cent.

There were six other contenders in an election where 5,681,369 of the 13,954,129 total voters on the roll did not show up at the 23,851 polling stations countrywide.

Youth vote
With the biggest part of the population being the young people, there is likely to be a battle for who wins the souls of the bazzukulu. Presidential candidates are expected to demonstrate in their manifestos how they intend to deal with the unemployment crisis that has been worsened by loss of more jobs as businesses shut down due to the adverse effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown.

Government has introduced several programmes aimed at lifting the youth from the rags of poverty. The Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development is implementing the Youth Livelihood Programme (YLP) whereas the skilling programme for organised groups locally known as emyoga have been supported.

Mr Godber Tumushabe, the chief executive officer at Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies, explains that the 2.5m new voters on the register are young people who have turned 18 years of age since 2016 and that they have a bearing on the direction of the next election results.

“You realise that their percentages are lower on most of the questions partly because there are about 2m voters. Our expectation is that, and the data shows that these are mainly young people who have entered the voting bracket,” Mr Tumushabe says.

“Someone who has voted before, there is a likelihood that they tend to vote for the previous candidate. But when you have new information, you cannot predict how they are going to vote. So that crop of new voters who are young people,” he adds.

The battle for Kampala
Shortly after dumping her party, the Uganda Federal Alliance (UFA), and taking up a job in Mr Museveni’s Cabinet as Minister for Kampala, Ms Beti Olive Kamya, declared that the city will have been captured from the hands of the Opposition by 2021.

Will this be realised? The President has visited and donated huge sums of money to groups of people, mostly traders, and this has been seen by the Opposition as buying support. In Kampala, Opposition parties are fighting one another, especially FDC and Bobi Wine’s new party, NUP, which merged with his People Power Movement. Analysts say Mr Museveni might capitalise on the quarrels within the Opposition to sweep Kampala votes.

The regions
While Mr Museveni and his closest rival, Dr Besigye, come from the same region, the western force is expected to be a huge task to silence Bobi Wine who is riding on the support of the youth and also the populated voting area of Buganda. Since the 1996 battle between Mr Museveni and Mr Paul Kawanga Ssemoggerere, Buganda has not imposed a threat to power and this would change with Bobi Wine who also rides on his popularity as a top musician.

Dr Besigye has on all occasions lost the battle for Buganda, which is the central part of the country, to Mr Museveni. In 2016, Mr Museveni commanded support in most parts of Buganda save for Kampala and Wakiso districts. The incumbent got 1,422,836 votes against Dr Besigye’s 1,228,508 whereas in 2016, he got 1,428,954 votes with the runner up getting 717,851 votes.

Like Buganda, the incumbent in the previous two elections has commanded the lead in eastern, northern and western regions. In the western region, Kasese District stands tall as the only Opposition dominated area where the FDC scooped all the six parliamentary seats in 2016. The battle for Kasese is also likely to intensify, with Opposition candidates expected to dwell on the November 2016 raid on Rwenzururu King Charles Wesley Mumbere’s palace leaving more than 100 people dead.

The king, out on bail and not allowed to travel to his kingdom together with about 200 others, are yet to face trial.
Dr Patrick Wakida of Research World International, said yesterday that “regions are going to be very critical. If you look at a region like the west, especially Ankole [region] seems to still say Museveni is the right candidate. Kigezi seems to be yearning to increase its affinity for Dr Besigye. So it is going to be based on when people are allowed to go out there and campaign.”

New cities
This year, the government created 15 cities spread across the regions of Uganda. Mbarara, Gulu, Arua, Masaka, Mbale and Jinja cities became operational on July 1, and a recent decision by Parliament has also brought forward the commencement of Hoima, Soroti and Lira cities.

As has been the case for the new districts, the NRM and Mr Museveni will justify their quest for votes in these cities because of having created them with an objective of bringing services nearer to the people. Gulu, Mbale, Arua, Soroti and Arua are the ones that have had MPs elected on the Opposition ticket in the previous elections.

Digital campaigns
As the Opposition continues to engage the EC over the mode of campaigns that has since been termed digital, the incumbent has continued to run the show as he is assured of at least two hours of free airtime on television and radio stations monthly.
Mr Museveni has been giving national addresses on the fight against Covid-19. He has used one of those addresses to castigate those who are having reservations on scientific elections.

“….the danger is in the holding of public gatherings. If you eliminate those and messages of the contestants are passed on through the radios, TVs, social media, etc, the gathering for the elections themselves can be safely managed with hand-washing, social distancing by leaving gaps of the necessary metres between voters in,” Mr Museveni said on June 22.

Much as the recent amendment to the Presidential Elections Act made it criminal for a manager of a national broadcaster not to allocate airtime equally to the presidential candidates, Opposition figures fear that it will be a different situation when they seek to speak on private stations most of which are owned by people in government.

Money in politics
Much as the candidates were free to meet the voters who voluntarily walked to the campaign rally venues, a study shows that Shs2.4 trillion was spent by the competing parties in the 2016 elections. The study was conducted by Alliance for Campaign Finance Monitoring (ACFIM), a civil society organisation.

During campaigns, there have always been allegations of cash exchanging hands as candidates seek to buy support. The study indicated that the NRM spent at least Shs333b, Dr Besigye and the FDC spent Shs12b and Independent candidates, both at presidential and parliamentary level, spent a total of Shs122.5b.

More money is expected to be used, especially as candidates and parties will scramble for television and radio airtime whereas home-to-home campaigns can’t be ruled out.
In the recent survey, at least 15 per cent of the respondents revealed that they had been offered financial inducements before whereas 82 per cent said they had not received money during campaigns. Three per cent declined to answer the question.