Now NGO Bureau doesn’t want more eyes looking into elections
What you need to know:
- Mr Bernard Tabaire says he NGO Bureau’s decision is patently in bad spirit. It is anti-democratic and should be reversed.
Almost two months ago, an entity known as the National Election Watch Uganda (NEW-U), an initiative of local civil society organisations, was formed primarily to observe Uganda’s unfolding electoral process.
The NGO Bureau has banned NEW-U, saying it was operating illegally. Before we discuss the NGO Bureau decision, let’s see what NEW-U says it is all about in some detail. A news item on the website of ActionAid, one of the subscribing NGOs says:
“On 10th September 2020, ActionAid International Uganda Country Director and other Civil Society leaders jointly launched the National Election Watch Uganda (NEW-U) – a domestic election observation initiative ahead of the February 2021 general elections.
NEW-U is a consortium of 60 Ugandan civil society organizations that seek to collectively engage in election observation, build citizens’ structures in collaborating with other election stakeholders.
Through observation, NEW-U seeks to promote electoral integrity, enhance citizen confidence and participation, mitigate potential violence and build sustainable civil society structures for election observation…
“NEW-U will train and deploy 135 long-term observers and 800 short-term observes in all the 135 districts of Uganda. Observers will be drawn from member organizations, network of citizen observers and highly trained network of professional observers who will generate data to determine the credibility, freeness and fairness of the elections...
The observation will focus on seven thematic areas namely: gender and women participation in elections, youth and elections, persons with disabilities participation in elections, money and campaign financing, media and ICT in elections, peace and security, and human rights in elections.”
Isn’t this a beautiful initiative that should be encouraged?
The NGO Bureau is hiding behind legalese to prevent Ugandans from organising themselves to monitor the electoral process. As the collaborating NGOs have pointed out, there is no need to register to form a loose coalition for a short-lived purpose.
So, what is the Bureau scared of?
Let’s cut to the chase. The NRM government, acting out of paranoia, fears that entities such as NEW-U will be used as underground channels through which wicked foreigners will channel money to the opposition.
Whereas it has a good handle on the already existing NGOs, a new entity provides fresh headache — it takes time to investigate it to figure out what exactly is going on. Where is the money coming from? How is it coming in? Where is it going? How is it being used. So, the easy route is to have the NGO Bureau to ban the damn thing.
Besides money to the opposition, it is not in the NRM government’s interest to have more eyes looking into how it is running the electoral process. Given the conduct of previous elections, the worry must be around the local observers’ intent to look into “money and campaign financing, media and ICT in elections, peace and security, and human rights in elections”’. Money? We know who bribes the most. Media, security, human rights — the security services, especially the police, are the violators.
With Covid-19, it is unlikely there will be any sizeable contingent of foreign observation missions in Uganda around voting time. That being the case, it is important to have local observers. In fact, it is always important to have strong local observers Covid or no Covid.
Instead of supporting the continued growth of local election observation capacity, the government is trashing it. It probably also prefers foreigners who pop in at voting time and pop out and issue reports the government will not respect. For local observers, they live in Uganda and are likely to follow up on their recommendations.
The NGO Bureau’s decision is patently in bad spirit. It is anti-democratic and should be reversed. If the Bureau cannot reverse itself within days, and it is unlikely to do so, it should be sued. Meanwhile, the NGOs have to think of Plan B so that they can continue with their critical work.
Tabaire is a media trainer and commentator on public affairs based in Kampala. [email protected]
Twitter:@btabaire
