DP’s Beatrice Kayanja disqualified from Kampala lord mayoral race

Ms Beatrice Kayanja. COURTESY PHOTO  

What you need to know:

Kampala woman MP, Ms Nabbila Nagayi Ssempala is to contest as the NUP flag bearer after she dropped her FDC party ticket. The National Resistance Movement (NRM) endorsed Mr Daniel Kazibwe best known by his stage name Ragga Dee to run for the second time after failed to oust Mr Lukwago in 2016 general elections.

The Democratic Party’s (DP) candidate for the Kampala Lord Mayoral race, Ms Beatrice Kayanja has failed to meet the requisite demands for her nomination and thus locked out of the race, Electoral Commission has confirmed.

In an interview with the Daily Monitor, the Kampala District returning officer, Mr Fredrick Muwaya said that Ms Kayanja had not registered as a voter, something she had to first clear but failed.

“One of the candidates being Ms Kayanja Beatrice didn’t manage to meet the threshold in order for us to be able to verify her papers,” Mr Muwaya said.

He added: “It is required that before we even start receiving candidate’s papers for verification, we should first get the candidates proof of registration as a voter. In our database which we are using to verify voters and also the candidates, we discovered that Ms Kayanja was not in our data base.”

Mr Muwaya also revealed that Ms Kayanja failed to personally verify and confirm her registration status and she therefore could not be nominated.

“We referred her to the authorities so that she clears her registration status before she comes back to us. As we speak today, the last day of nomination we have not received anything to that effect. She has not gotten back to us and so we assume that she has probably pulled out of the process,” Mr Muwaya said.

Ms Kayanja was fielded in an attempt to unseat former DP stalwart and incumbent Lord Mayor, Mr Erias Lukwago. Mr Lukwago formally crossed to the Forum Democratic Change (FDC) and was on Wednesday nominated to contest in the same race for the same seat.

In the same race also is Mr Joseph Mayanja alias Chameleon who will contest as an independent after he failed to secure the National Unity Platform (NUP) flag. Kampala woman MP, Ms Nabbila Nagayi Ssempala is to contest as the NUP flag bearer after she dropped her FDC party ticket. The National Resistance Movement (NRM) endorsed Mr Daniel Kazibwe best known by his stage name Ragga Dee to run for the second time after failed to oust Mr Lukwago in 2016 general elections.