Moses Byaruhanga
21 January 2008
opinion
Kampala — A lot has been said and written about events in neighbouring Kenya. The region has been affected as Kenya provides a cheaper gateway to the sea for Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, and south Sudan. Besides, in case of Uganda, Kenya is our biggest trading partner.
So the situation in Kenya now is affecting both our imports and exports, hence revenue collection by URA and inflow of revenue from exports.
In the past few weeks, focus has been on fuel but if the situation is not brought under control, the effect on our economy will be enormous.
Soon grocery shops will run out of supplies and the rising prices as a result of reduction in supply will lead to inflationary tendencies. This calls for Uganda and the other affected countries mentioned above to exploit an alternative cheap route to the sea.
Dar es Salaam and Tanga, both in Tanzania, come into picture. Currently, the Dar route is slightly more expensive but this can be worked on by reducing the costs in infrastructure, railway, road between Dar and Mwanza.
Uganda should have working ferries on Lake Victoria. We also need more storage facilities at the Dar port and construction of a pipeline from Dar to Mwanza. The alternative is that the Tanga port could be developed by the member countries and be dedicated to the regional hinterland countries.
I think we need a special summit of the East African Community member countries to address the issue of member countries affected by events in Kenya investing in infrastructure to develop an alternative route to the sea other than Mombasa.
Looking at events in Kenya, I think Uganda has a better electoral system. In the last elections in Uganda, we used photographic voter registers. While advising the Electoral Commission to introduce photographic voter registers in 2000, the President urged that it would help weed out ghost voters. He further pointed out that in case the results of an election were close, and one side felt cheated through ghost voters it could lead to chaos.
The President laboured all this to convince the then finance minister to provide enough funds to the commission to introduce a photographic register.
While finance was saying that there were no enough funds, the President cautioned that the cost of a disputed election was greater than the budgetary requirement needed at the time for the new register. Although funds were eventually provided, the commission didn't have a photographic register ready for the 2001 national elections.
However, we were able to use it in the last national and local government elections. The idea of a photographic register is that the agents of all the candidates on behalf of their candidates are able to prove the identity of a voter to avoid a person voting in the name of another who might not be existing.
Recalling the above our president used prediction as a tool of political analysis. Our brothers in Kenya unfortunately, didn't have a photographic register. For all the time I have worked on President Museveni's campaign team, we have always planned for a clean election.
I'm sure people like Mzee Bidandi Ssali, although in opposition, can testify to this. He was the Vice Chairperson of Mr Museveni's campaign team in 1996 and 2001 to which teams I was the Secretary.
You may ask why then did the Supreme Court declare that there was non-compliance with the law. A good question.
Non-compliance with the law affects all candidates equally and much of it is a weakness of the Electoral Commission (EC). On polling day in 2006, while monitoring polling stations in Kampala, I was confronted by some of our supporters who were in possession of voters' cards but whose names were not on the register. Candidate Museveni was informed. His advice was that a formal complaint be made to the EC. Indeed a written complaint was made by the Museveni campaign team on polling day before counting of the votes.
In his petition to the Supreme Court, Besigye raised the issue of his supporters not appearing on the register as one of the grounds. Of course this was proved as non compliance with the law. As you have seen above, we were the first to complain but since we won, we couldn't go to court to complain that some of our supporters didn't vote.
Other cases of non-compliance like staffing of ballot papers had been detected by the EC and results of those polling stations canceled. We didn't have cases of people complaining that what was declared by the EC was different from the results at polling stations.
FDC had no capacity to win elections, their noise notwithstanding. Out of 280 directly elected parliamentary seats including women seats, FDC had candidates in only 100 constituencies. Even though they had won all the 100, they would still have had a minority in parliament. In all opinion polls carried out by Steadman, a Kenyan firm, it was clear that Museveni was in the lead.
The writer is special presidential assistant on political affairs
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
