Kiggundu recounts pressures of chairing the election body

A former Electoral Commission (EC) Chairperson, who presided over three consequential general and presidential elections, has revealed that initial inexperience and use of manual voters’ register challenged election management.  

President Museveni tapped Dr Badru Kiggundu from academia in 2002 and he superintended the country’s polls for fourteen years --- from 2002 to 2016 --- and is presently a senior presidential advisor.

In a new book titled, Stepping into the Unknown, he discloses that his team’s first baptism of fire was to organise a by-election in the south-western Kabale District within 10 days upon assuming office.   

“I felt excitement and apprehension about the task,” Dr Kiggundu writes, “completing this by-election within the stipulated timeframe was crucial to avoid a constitutional issue.”

Pulling off the assignment instilled confidence in the team and provided a problem-solving template on which the commissioners inscribed themselves as ‘midwives’ with a mantra of “delivering a healthy baby” – an euphemism for clean elections.

The goal that the new EC set for itself was in subsequent ballots to place it in the dock, where it successfully defended its results for 2006 and 2016 presidential elections while the outcome for 2011 ended in the protracted Walk-to-Work street protests.

Before ballot related fall-outs played out in public, Dr Kiggundu reveals in the memoir that his team internally grappled with how to authenticate particulars of voters on the roll where individuals who shared names were distinguished with numerical suffixes. 

He writes that “the most significant challenge we encountered was manually authenticating voters”, and the team at particular polling stations found multiple entries of voters with shared surnames, differentiated by additions of digits such as “Kiggundu 1, Kiggundu 2 and Kiggundu 3”.

“We were presented with [thousands of] pages of typed names, purportedly representing eligible voters. However, determining the authenticity of these individuals posed a monumental problem,” the former ex-EC boss added. 

Dr Kiggundu, while detailing a future resolution of the problem through deployment of “super-level technology”, does not however explore the impact of a questionable manual voters’ register on the conduct and outcome of the general elections.

The lack of timely display of a credible and verifiable national voters’ register was key among a raft of unfulfilled demands over which the Opposition faulted the Kiggundu-led EC that declared President Museveni the winner of the 2006, 2011 and 2016 elections with 59.2 percent, 68.3percent and 60.6 percent, respectively.

Dr Kizza Besigye, his main challenger at the ballots, rejected all these results. In 2006, like he did in 2001, the former personal physician to President Museveni petitioned the Supreme Court whose judges agreed that there was proven rigging and other irregularities during conduct of elections and tallying of results.

The justices, however, concluded that the impact of the malpractices on final outcome of the poll was not “substantial enough”– the threshold set under Uganda’s law - to warrant an annulment.

After being served similar verdicts twice by the country’s highest court, Dr Besigye said he would never challenge disputed ballot outcome in court again, choosing in the aftermath of the 2011 elections to take his case to what he called the “court of public opinion”.

This signature Opposition defiance birthed the Walk-to-Work demonstration to which law enforcement agencies under then Inspector General of Police Kale Kayihura, fearful the Arab Spring that had ousted long-serving leaders across North Africa could materialise at home, deployed unparalleled brutality to subdue Opposition supporters.

Several dozens were either killed, maimed or incarcerated. Dr Besigye himself had to be flown for emergency treatment in Nairobi, Kenya, after a police officer named Gilbert Arinaitwe broke his car window glass and doused him with pepper spray, injuring his eyes.

In his 260-page book launched at Kabojja International School in Kampala on Friday, Dr Kiggundu does not reference these politically important moments in Uganda’s history as a result of the work and decisions of the Electoral Commission that he led.

Instead, he recounts how his dedication and that of his team through resilience and adaptability delivered elections that progressed democratic governance in the country.

He writes: “Amid countless hurdles and arduous endeavours, we persevered, knowing that our work had a profound impact on the future of our nation. We took pride in knowing our efforts contributed to a more inclusive, transparent, and participatory democratic society.”

His narrative is that they paid fidelity to transparency and impartiality, despite suspicions and blame games from rival political camps, and invoked the constitutional protections to act independent of any influences.

That steely resolve, Dr Kiggundu writes, was manifest when they in 2005 nominated Dr Besigye then incarcerated in Luzira Prisons, to run for President despite the then Attorney General Prof Kiddu Makubuya advising against it.

Dr Besigye was facing a several grave charges, ranging from alleged rape, treason, terrorism to being in illegal possession of firearms that the State had slapped against him ahead of the 2006 polls.

Following the position of the electoral body, prison authorities at Luzira Prison where Besigye was being held, allowed him to fill in his presidential nomination papers. The prison authorities also permitted a photographer from the EC into the facility to take pictures that would be attached to his nomination forms.

The government’s principal legal advisor had argued that being on remand did not place the Opposition leader on the same level of innocence as other unencumbered contenders, rendering him ineligible for nomination as a presidential flag bearer.

Dr Besigye was hurled into jail on multiple charges, including treason, shortly after returning from South Africa where he ran into exile following an unsuccessful run for the highest political office in 2001.

The decision on his candidature high stakes, according to Dr Kiggundu, and the pressures and dilemmas were exacerbated by the AG’s objection and the EC legal team’s failure to find precedents on candidates nominated from prison to guide the commissioners in decision-making.  

“While we considered his (AG Makubuya’s) advice, we [had]to uphold the law. I asked my colleagues ‘what their conscience told them’ … ultimately we agreed that we couldn’t accept that advice because we had to adhere to the law,” Dr Kiggundu writes.

Following the public disclosure of their decision, the former EC chair said well-wishers express feared for his life with others asking if he would endure the backlash. His reply: “Survive what? Let history be the judge”. Once home that night, Dr Kiggundu says a prominent Opposition leader whom he does not mention telephoned to applaud his courage but developed a cold feet to put the plaudit in writing. 

The next morning, a female Cabinet minister scrambled to Dr Kiggundu’s office to thank him, saying the decision to nominate Dr Besigye to run for president from prison “elevated you beyond measure”.

The chapter on elections, titled Election selection administration, cover only 16 of the 260 pages of Dr Kiggundu’s book that explores the place of integrity in personal and professional life and leveraging one’s strengths to overcome fear and achieve goals and mentor others. 

He discloses that he always prayed before declaring election results in order to do the right thing and be at peace with himself and the creator.

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