ELECTION VIOLENCE
The just concluded NRM primaries were eye openers upon which, 2016 political actors should reflect on as we head to the general elections. The manner in which these primaries were conducted revealed a lot of absurdity about the democratic credentials of NRM. Obviously, the first casualty of the primaries was its own internal democracy.
While the spin doctors want to paint the chaos that marred these elections as a sign of the party's popularity in the country, civil people with low tolerance for violence would think otherwise. The chaos, to many, reflected the inherent nature of NRM, and the false internal cohesion.
Many people look up to the NRM, not as a political Party with an appealing ideology. They look at it as a cash-cow, or a milk machine to extort Uganda. To them, NRM is the assured platform for personal aggrandizement through plundering national resources.
Therefore, any opportunity to board that bus, is one to kill for. None of those violent people are inherently violent, nor are the violent acts we witnessed, random. Those people are conditioned to partake violence through endurance of depravity.
Museveni's NRM operates using carrot and sticks methods. If you support the Party, you may gain access to national resources – not Party resources. The Party is fused with the state from its neck downwards. The closer you are to the temple of power, the higher the probability of grabbing on the milking machine.
The second victim of the primaries are common-sense and civility – the severe lack of basic principle of courtesy due to endemic distrust between the eating class and euphoric enthusiasts. Even calm and sober people were ready to rip each other apart like wild animals, just to win. The glaring lack of order in this Party is jaw-dropping. No institution functions independent of Museveni, and efficiently.
The third and most important of all was a revelation of impunity, callousness and debauchery. All the vices associated with previous national elections became manifest in this elections. The magnitude of ballot stuffing was simply shocking. Social media was awash with video clips of young men pre-ticking ballots.
The fourth victim was integrity of elections. Strangely, candidates in some parts of the country had the opportunity to transport their own ballot materials from the Police station. The word irregularity does not even capture this particular madness enough. But the picture of the Police officer in uniform, casting his ballot, could not have salvaged the image of the Police as an impartial force. Opprobriously.
When Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanya decried that the Party "bit more than it could chew" for this elections, one would think otherwise. This Party has a fully fledged Secretariat, staffed to the teeth. Its Electoral Commission is funded lavishly and in excess. The EC has not complained of lack of money, transport , or staffing. What could have gone wrong?
Here again we look at this as the continuity of the grand inefficiencies prevalent in all government institutions; the incompetence, the inattention to details, the arrogance, corruption, and culture of taking everything for granted while flourishing on titles – (arrivalism).
In short, the NRM EC exhibited incompetence and inexperience. These vices feature in the general elections.
In the NRM primaries, we saw how numbers were victimized. In many polling stations, ballot papers were inadequate. In some areas, there were mysterious candidates, others omitted, or not listed on the ballot papers. This shows clearly that the EC was in total disarray - incompetent, uncoordinated, or negligent.
Above all, this primaries goes down as the most chaotic elections ever held in Uganda's history.
END.
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