By Stephen Bwire
The NRM Secretary General Justine Kasule Lumumba has tasked the Electoral Commission Chairman Justice Simon Byabakama to consult political parties on the revised roadmap for the 2021 general elections.
Lumumba was speaking during the IPOD panel discussion organised by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) in collaboration with the Public Policy Institute (PPI) under the theme, “Delivering safe and credible elections amidst COVID-19 in Uganda” at Sheraton Hotel Kampala on Thursday this week.
“The EC should have done due diligence before announcing the revised roadmap. Parties go through a process to generate candidates, and the EC is fully aware of this; this is what they should have consulted with the scientists,” she said quickly adding: “How do you expect us [NRM] to convene a meeting of 15,000 delegates at Namboole to elect our party leaders, and yet this is a requirement which the Party must fulfill.”
The NRM top bureaucrat also revealed that the ruling party was the most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I would say that the NRM is the most affected party by the COVID pandemic much as other political parties are equally affected. We are thinking of how we shall go about our internal electoral processes to elect about 3million leaders right from the grassroots to the national level. Our programmes are currently on hold including the primaries and delegates conference,” she elaborated.
In response to the above queries, the EC chairperson Simon Byabakama said that the revised electoral roadmap is not cast in stone, and thus it’s subject to amendment through consensus by the different political actors and stakeholders.
He also dismissed allegations that the proposed scientific campaigns and elections are orchestrated by the EC to deny other contesting parties and candidates free and fair electoral process. “When we launched the revised roadmap, we stated that mass campaign rallies can’t be sustainable due to the abnormal situation of COVID-19. So we opened the door to other stakeholders interested in this electoral process to come up with other alternatives apart from media engagements,” he said.
