By KT Reporter
Security personnel, including soldiers and police officers, spent several minutes calming tensions at the Kampala District tally centre located at Makerere University Business School (MUBS), where candidates and their agents protested against some of the results being read.
The tallying of district results for the Lord Mayoral race and councillors, which began at around 10:00 p.m., has so far reached 36 per cent. Progress has been slowed by repeated interruptions, as candidates and agents dispute the results being announced, arguing that they do not match the declaration forms issued at polling stations.
Chaos erupted at the Kawempe Division tally tent, forcing soldiers and police to chase away noisy agents and candidates in an effort to restore order. Ashraf Busulwa, an agent from Makerere II, accused Kawempe Division Electoral Commission officials of reading results from declaration forms different from those in the possession of candidates and agents.
Busulwa alleges that the election officer is favouring NRM agents by addressing only their objections while ignoring complaints raised by NUP agents. Together with his colleague, Jackson Mayanja, who represents Denis Mukiibi (currently remanded at Luzira Prison), they claim that declaration forms from Mulago Parish do not tally with the results being read. Mukiibi is contesting for a councillor in Kawempe South.
Earlier, Jennifer Kyobutungi, the Kampala District Returning Officer, said tallying was expected to conclude within five hours from 10:00 p.m., since results had already been tallied at the parish level. However, she noted that interruptions and demands by candidates for polling-station-by-polling-station tallying significantly delayed the process.
“We have five divisions, each with an election officer who reads results from sealed envelopes, scans them, and tallies them. The division tally team then adds up the results before forwarding them to the central tent, where the District Commission Presiding Officer declares the winners,” Kyobutungi explained.
Some candidates who spent the night at the tally centre include Ronald Nsubuga Balimwezo of NUP, a contestant in the mayoral race. Balimwezo told URN that while the process of reading and tallying results, polling station by polling station, is time-consuming, it is necessary for transparency and accuracy.
“The process has dragged on, but we are patient and content. We rejected their initial plan of tallying by parishes because it was causing tension. We want results displayed and read out as we compare them with our declaration forms, and we want to see them entered into the system. Accuracy is key,” Balimwezo said.
Earlier in the night, Joel Ssenyonyi, the Leader of Opposition, who is also representing John Mary Ssebufu, a direct councillor for Nakawa West who was recently arrested, said the tallying process was better than that of last week’s presidential and parliamentary elections, despite the delays.
Ssenyonyi stressed that results read from polling stations must strictly match the declaration forms. “The delays were inevitable, given the simple mistakes we have seen. We did not expect the process to suddenly speed up,” he added.
At the moment, tallying is still ongoing under heavy deployment of soldiers and police officers. The Electoral Commission officer reading out polling station results continues to face verbal abuse and heated exchanges with charged agents and candidates, particularly from the Kawempe Division tent, as tallying proceeds in the other divisions.
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