By KT Reporter
Three candidates who lost in last week’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) primaries for the Jinja West parliamentary seat have stormed the party offices in Jinja City, demanding the nullification of former MP Moses Balyeku’s victory.
Daniel Kanu, David Talenga, and former Jinja Resident City Commissioner Erick Sakwa accuse Balyeku of orchestrating widespread electoral irregularities with the help of security operatives. They claim Balyeku’s declaration as winner lacked transparency and violated NRM’s electoral procedures.
According to the trio, Balyeku was declared the sole winner without the presentation of any tally sheets—unlike in other constituencies where results were properly aggregated and verified by district registrars. They further accuse Balyeku of manipulating polling timelines. While NRM guidelines stipulate that voting should begin with a barraza at 10:00am and lining up at 11:30am, the candidates claim voting began as early as 8:00am and concluded by 9:00am—creating room for multiple voting and other irregularities.
The group alleges that Balyeku hired groups of rowdy youths, locally known as Egali, who disrupted the exercise by assaulting voters, with the alleged backing of security personnel. The candidates have since held a protest at the NRM offices in Jinja City and vowed to file a joint petition at the NRM secretariat in Kampala, seeking nullification of the results and a fresh primary election.
“We believe only a by-election can restore the true voice of the people,” they said in a joint statement. Some voters, like Hadijah Namaganda, supported the candidates’ claims, saying she was assaulted at a polling station while police stood by. “Such brutal acts scared many voters from participating. Some fled for their safety,” she said.
Mary Adong, another voter, accused village registrars of using unofficial documents to record results. She said they were presented with papers torn from exercise books instead of official declaration of results (DR) forms. “This gave registrars a loophole to tamper with results without accountability,” Adong said.
In response, Balyeku defended his win, calling the election free and fair, and urged his rivals to rally behind him ahead of the 2026 general elections. Jinja City Deputy NRM Registrar Gorette Akello, who announced the results on Thursday night, dismissed the allegations, saying she personally monitored the voting process and found it transparent. Akello advised aggrieved parties to petition the NRM Electoral Commission Tribunal, which is tasked with handling all primary-related complaints-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
