Bobi Vs Mbabazi 2016 poll petition

On Monday, National Unity Platform’s (NUP) Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, who came second in the January 14 presidential poll, filed in the Supreme Court a petition challenging President Museveni’s victory. Derrick Kiyonga and Joel Mukisa compare Mr Kyagulanyi’s petition with the failed 2016 petition which was filed by former prime minister Amama Mbabazi.

Use of civil servants
In his petition, Mr Mbabazi sought annulment of Mr Museveni’s election on grounds that he had used civil servants such as Jennifer Musisi, then executive director of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA), and Ms Allen Kagina the executive director of Uganda National Roads Authority (Unra) when the President was campaigning in the western district of Kanungu, which he said is against the law.

  Mr Mbabazi said the use of such government resources gives Mr Museveni unfair advantage.  Mr Kyagulanyi, in his petition, doesn’t raise that issue.   

Voters register  
Although both Mr Mbabazi and Mr Kyagulanyi take issue with the voter register, they tackle it differently.   Mr Mbabazi’s case was that Electoral Commission (EC) overstepped its mandate when it retired the 2011 national voters register.
  
“By retiring and archiving the 2011 national voters register, the Commission abdicated its role that mandates it to compile, maintain, revise and update the register as per Article 61 of the Constitution,” Mr Mbabazi contended.

 Mr Mbabazi’s legal team argued that the EC had ceded its authority to the National Security Information System Taskforce (NSIST) when it relied on the taskforce’s National Identity Card data to compile the new national voter’s register.

However, in his petition, Mr Kyagulanyi  says  contrary to the principle of universal adult suffrage as enshrined in the Consitution, the EC  failed and, or neglected its duty to take all necessary steps to ensure that all citizens qualified to vote, as envisaged by the national identification database, register and effectively exercise their right to vote. 

Mr Kyagulanyi petition argues that the electoral body failed in all necessary steps to ensure all citizens qualified to vote as envisaged by the national identification data base, register in order to exercise their right to vote when it failed to “maintain and update an accurate and clean voters register to ensure active participation of all Ugandans.

Voter bribery 
Mr Mbabazi insisted in the petition that contrary to Section 64 (1) and (4) of the Presidential Election Act, Mr Museveni and his agents, with the knowledge and consent or approval, gave a bribe of hoes to the voters of West Nile with the intent that they should vote him.  

In his petition, Mr Kyagulanyi, without being specific like Mr Mbabazi was, accuses Mr Museveni and his agents of committing acts of bribery by providing or causing the provision of money and other gifts to voters with the intent to cause them to vote him. 

In his petition, Mr Mbabazi directly accused Mr Museveni of being behind the disappearance [he later reappeared] of Christopher Aine, who used to lead his security team. The former premier insisted that Mr Museveni committed electoral offences when he threatened his [Mbabazi’s] supporters and described Aine as an “idiot” who “would be dealt with”. 

“Subsequently, the said Aine disappeared and was feared dead, only for the claim to turn out as frivolous. The first respondent’s [Museveni] statements and subsequent disappearance of the said Christopher Aine, which was widely reported in print and broadcast media, had a chilling effect on the voter population, who were under threat of being harmed or injured,” the petition read. 

This, however juxtaposed with the Kyagulanyi petition, is slightly different but the issues border on the role of security agencies in the broader election season. 

 On his part, Mr Kyagulanyi claims that the deployment of security personnel across the towns and villages across the country with unidentifiable military personnel armed with guns and armoured vehicles created a general atmosphere of fear and terror, causing many people to refrain from voting. 

Mr Kyagulanyi also accuses the military of being behind the death of his former bodyguard Francis Ssenteza, who was killed as he was trying to rush Ashraf Kasirye, a journalist with NUP affiliated Ghetto TV, to hospital after he had allegedly been hit by a rubber bullet fired by police in Masaka City. “I was informed that he had been deliberately knocked down by a military police patrol vehicle Reg. No.  H4DF 2382 at Busega roundabout as he attempted to plead with security officers who were beating another colleague called Kawooya,” Mr Kyagulanyi says. 
 
Internet shutdown 
Both Mr Mbabazi and Mr Kyagulanyi have challenged the Internet shutdown on and after election day.  Mr Mbabazi insisted in his petition that the blocking of social media on polling day was ordered by Mr Museveni and the EC. This, they argue, created information blackout and denied voters information on real-time election results.

“This act facilitated and enabled the second respondent [EC] to cook and manipulate figures and numbers of election results,” the petition reads.

Furthermore, Mr Mbabazi says blocking access to social media denied him and his agents the possibility of exchanging information regarding the electoral process.

“The petitioner [Mbabazi] had positioned his agents and supporters with appropriate devices to collect results and transmit to him and his national campaign headquarters, which efforts were curtailed by illegal blockade. This was aggravated by the directive of the second respondent barring voters from accessing polling stations with telephones,” he said.

Mr Kyagulanyi accuses the State of failure to ensure fairness when they switched off the Internet, “thereby curtailing the free flow of information within the electorate and resource facilitation to agents of the petitioner.” 

“Switching off of [the] Internet complicated communication and transmission of documents between us at the party headquarters and our branches, as well as supporters across the country,” Mr Kyagulanyi says.    

Militia 
In the petition, Mr Mbabazi accused Mr Museveni of fashioning partisan militia called crime preventers, under the watch of then Inspector General of Police, Gen Kale Kayihura. 

The militia, Mr Mbabazi said, was used to intimidate members of the public. 

However, in his petition, Mr Kyagulanyi takes exception with the general involvement of the military, which he says Mr Museveni is in direct control of, in the campaigns.  
 
“Throughout my campaigns, I was always followed by more than 30 Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) security vehicles, including armoured police trucks commonly known as “mambas”, water cannons, teargas trucks and temporary detention trucks commonly known as ‘mobile prisons’,” he says. 

“Many of the said vehicles that followed me bore no registration plates and some UPDF officers did not have name tags, making it impossible for us to identify them, whenever they carried out acts complained of.”      

Transparency   

Mr Kyagulanyi further contends that the EC failed to ascertain, transit, tabulate and declare the actual results of the presidential elections with transparency as provided under Article 61 (1) (d) of the Constitution and Section 54 of the Presidential Elections Act, a claim similar to that in Mr Mbabazi’s petition in which he claimed the EC officials would process and fix results and thereafter show to agents what they called results.

Museveni statements
Mr Mbabazi took exception to Mr Museveni’s use of the phrase “If you put your hands in the anus of a leopard, you are in trouble.” Mr Museveni was responding to clashes between his supporters and those of Mr Mbabazi in Ntungamo.  
  
Mr Kyagulanyi, too, accuses Mr Museveni of making mudslinging false statements. He took exception when Mr Museveni characterised him and his group as those without ideological direction and that his candidature is influenced by foreign forces.  

Biometric system  

In his petition, which had been amended, Mr Mbabazi asked EC to disclose the image clone of the Biometric Voter Verification System [BVVS], database, electronic results transmission and dissemination system. He asserted that it was critical to produce such information in order to “add up and tally the number of votes cast for each candidate as recorded in the DR forms for the ascertainment of the final result in comparison with that announced and declared by the second respondent [EC].”

Mr Mbabazi also sought the disclosure of the date on the BVVK [Biometric voter verification kit] for each polling station and the BVV database on the national basis to prove that the number of voters declared by the EC was materially different from the number of voters recorded on BVV database. 

 The former premier contended that the BVVK and BVVS working for nine hours and allocating two minutes per voter could verify approximately 270 voters per polling station and yield approximately 7,562,700 voters nationally.

“In effect, the 10,329,131 voters the second respondent [EC] declared as having voted could not have voted on polling day,” Mr Mbabazi argued. 

Nevertheless, despite the fact that the Biometric Voter Verification System was deployed in what the EC chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama said was an effort to curb electoral fraud, Mr Kyagulanyi doesn’t raise any issue with the system in his 20-paged -petition.