Fred Nyanzi files petition challenging Nsereko's victory

The re-election of Muhammad Nsereko (Independent), as the Member of Parliament representing Kampala Central constituency, has been challenged before the High Court in Kampala.

Mr Nsereko’s January 14 victory, is being challenged by his closest rival, Mr Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu.

Mr Nyanzi is the elder brother to former presidential candidate, Robert Kyagulanyi of the opposition party, National Unity Platform (NUP).

In his petition that he filed on Wednesday, Mr Nyanzi raises 17 grounds, citing alleged electoral malpractices by the Electoral Commission and Mr Nsereko, thereby denying him victory.

He goes on to name 50 polling stations which he claims have clear arithmetical errors which can’t be explained by the electoral body, hence non-compliance with the electoral laws.

“Your petitioner (Nyanzi) complains that the election of the Member of Parliament of the Kampala Central Constituency was not conducted in accordance with the electoral laws and that there was non-compliance, and failure to conduct free and fair elections affected the results in a substantial manner,” Mr Nyanzi avers in his petition.

He also contends that seven presiding officers committed electoral offenses by failing without lawful excuse to furnish true returns of the election to the returning officer within the timeframe in which they were required.

“Presiding officers and the returning officer deliberately made a wrong entry on the final tally sheet by posting wrong votes at the respective polling station and this affected the final results in the return form for transmission of results to the electoral commission,” the petition reads in part.

Mr Nyanzi also claims in his petition that several votes at several polling stations were not included in the final tally sheet something the returning officer had no explanation to.

In the January 14 general election, the returning officer for Kampala Central, who has been jointly sued along Mr Nsereko and the EC, declared Mr Nsereko as the winner of the hotly contested race with 16,998 votes cast against Mr Nyanzi’s 15,975 votes.

The margin between the two contenders was 1,023 votes.

The other contestants in the race were; Mr Harold Kaija Scandrone (FDC) with 1,679 votes, Mr Ronald Edward Ssenkubuge Mukasa (ANT) with 1,653 votes, and Mr Cedric Babu Ndilima (NRM) with 10,749 votes.

Mr Nyanzi accuses Mr Nsereko of vote stuffing, which he claims led to wrong postings and mathematical and arithmetical mistakes.

He also avers that the errors in the tallying exercise were grave and were mostly clerical errors, stating that these were enough to affect the outcome of the election results in general.

Through his lawyers of Semuyaba, Iga & Co. Advocates, Mr Nyanzi wants court to annul Mr Nsereko’s victory and instead declare him as the duly elected MP for Kampala Central.

The filing of the election petition, comes barely two months after the Mengo Chief Magistrates Court, declined to issue an order for the vote recount in the same constituency.

While dismissing the application for the vote recount, presiding Chief Magistrate Esther Nansambu, held that most of the grounds that Mr Nyanzi raised to trigger a vote recount, were not based on factual evidence but rather mere hearsay.

UTILITY

Some of the grounds that Mr Nyanzi has raised to annul Mr Nsereko’s victory:

- Failure to count votes in accordance with electoral laws

- Failure by presiding officers to submit results for seven polling stations

- Instances where votes for the petitioner were understated

- The election was not free and fair due to irregularities

- Returning officer deliberately left out some of the results

- Over 50 polling stations had arithmetical errors

- Returning officer wrongly posted results

-Overwhelming number of invalid votes because the counting exercise went on until after 6pm till late at night (as the EC delivered the voting materials late) and during this time, one is bound to make numerous mistakes due to poor visibility, invalidating valid votes and vice versa.