A delegation comprising of EC top bosses yesterday (Friday) drove to State House Entebbe for a meeting with President Museveni. They carried a huge document containing several proposals regarding how 2021 election time table or road map can be carried through without offending any of the COVID-related restrictions and measures imposed by Gen Museveni.
This was a follow up meeting to another one held days earlier. In the previous meeting, Gen Museveni (who risks losing power to Speaker Kadaga in case polling doesn’t take place on schedule) made it clear he wasn’t prepared to listen to any proposals calling for postponement until after COVID19. He told Simon Byabakama, the EC chairman that: you have the resources and everything: go sit with your teams and find a way forward.
The document they carried to the Friday meeting contained proposals on how the 2021 polling exercise can be safely conducted on time wothout increasing any citizens’ susceptibility to COVID19. The EC team assured Gen Museveni that the health ministry leadership had scrutnized their documented proposals and made input resulting into the neccessary improvements.
Sources say that Gen Museveni agreed with everything the EC team suggested in their document. “We had gone to consult if he was comfortable with how we intend to proceed and it was important to consult him to know what works for him because he will potentially be a candidate in that elections besides the fact that he remains the country’s CEO,” one of the EC top officials told Mulengera News.
Some of the things the EC is suggesting include each voter being forced to use a sanitizer on arrival at the polling station. The EC will also spend big money on procurement of thermometer guns to ensure whoever comes to vote have their temperature measured as a pre-requisite to being permitted into the polling area. And the elephant in the room was the method Presidential candidates, potentially including Gen Museveni, will use to convey their campaign messages to the voters.
The EC suggested that all candidates, not just Presidential ones, will use radio and TVs only to convey their messages and campaign promises. Fear to get people congregate into mass concentrations is the reason no rallies/political meetings, of whatever nature, are going to be permitted. Candidates will each meet the cost of the media airtime they are to use to communicate their campaign messages. Nobody will permitted to use that airtime to talk ill about of the good things NRM has done or failed to do.
UCC is to be strengthened to deepen regulation and control of both the conventional and social media during the campaigning period. Personal attacks on Gen Museveni or any of his cronies will cause such offending politicians to be banned from using any radio or TV stations to convey their campaign messages. EC will be popularizing these new SoPs in the coming days, weeks and months. More details later.
Credit: mulengeranews.com
