In a bid to encourage voter participation in the special Interest Group Elections, the Citizens’ Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU) successfully organised three stakeholder engagements together with the Electoral Commission in the Central region (Kampala), Eastern region (Mbale), Western region (Bundibugyo/Kasese), and Northern region.
The meetings aimed at facilitating a conversation between the EC and stakeholders to iron out challenges they were facing as they prepared for the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) elections.
With effect from today, Monday 27 July 2020, CCEDU will leverage its fan base of 4.5 million Ugandans to disseminate voter’ awareness information around the upcoming Special Interest Group elections set to commence with nominations on 29 July 2020.
CCEDU has trained and deployed at least one (1) community member in each of the 10,029 parishes of Uganda in which the Special Interest Group elections will be conducted.
Throughout the SIG elections, CCEDU will rely on a total of 10,200 community members to mobilise the electorate to participate in SIG elections that have in the past witnessed limited voter turnout. Besides rallying participation, the trained CCEDU members will also track the SIGs election exercise with specific focus on determining quality of involvement by various election stakeholders.
SIGs elections will see the election of representatives for People with Disabilities (PwDs), the Youth and Older persons through electoral colleges at village/zone or cell level; then Parish/ward level; followed by sub-county/Town/Municipal Division level; the Municipality/ City division level and finally the district/City level. Voters will line up behind a candidate’s portrait or symbol or agent or individual candidate. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is expected that the voting will comply with the EC and Ministry of Health guidelines on Covid-19.
Challenges:
The challenge for the Electoral Commission is going to be conducting the elections by lining up and at the same time minimising the risk of spread of Covid-19.
When a person with disabilities presents him/herself to contest for a position other than that gazatted for persons with disabilities, they are always discouraged and advised to stick to people with disabilities’ positions.
Access to information remains another challenge given the fact that SIGs elections espouse the participation of PwDs who find it hard to use computers to join a zoom meeting, or use a smart phone to access information. PwDs also have limitations in the use of Radio and Television.
According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics 2004 projections report, Uganda has approximately 6 million people with Disabilities. Of these an estimated 700,000 have a hearing impairment. For the 2021 Elections, only 382,577 PWDS are registered voters and will participate in the scheduled elections.
PWDs have unique needs when it comes to participation in electoral processes and they also need to be represented in leadership to advocate for their rights to equity and access to health, education, livelihood, and other societal sectors.
A person with a hearing impairment would require a sign language expert to interpret for them the voter information at polling stations and during campaigns.
A person with physical disability would need help of another person to move them from one place to another to aid their mobility.
A person with visual impairment would require the help of another to make a choice of candidate even if the election is by lining up. However, increasingly because of financial constraints and limitation in understanding the needs of PWDS’ their electoral processes usually enlist a low voter turn-out due to limited information reaching this category of people, but also some of them simply find it hard to participate in the governance of their country for lack of systems that would make their participation easier. Going by the numbers, only 382,577 managed to register and there is no guarantee that all of them will show up to participate in an election by lining up on August 13, 2020.
Recommendations for PwDs Elections: – There should be improvement in the awareness of the rights of PwDsby the electoral officials, the Government and the people with disabilities.
There is need to train Electoral Officials who preside over PwDs elections in sign language communication skills, this would improve communication, promote inclusion, diversity, and acceptance in the population and would boost the competence of electoral officials in managing person’s with disability during elections.
Campaigns and polling:
Campaigns shall be conducted for five days from Thursday 6th August 2020to 10th August 2020 for the village level elections. However, polling for each of the special interest groups (older persons, youth and PWDS) will take place on different dates in the 68,740 villages across Uganda. The different dates for polling, however, are likely to cause confusion among the voters’. It would have been prudent to have one date set for all the village elections.
Polling for Village older persons Committee shall take place on Tuesday August 11, 2020 and the voter’s register for older persons has a total of 1, 701,518 registered voters
Polling for village PWDS committees will be conducted on Thursday August 13, 2020. The PWD register has 382,577 registered voters.
The village youth Committee elections will be conducted on August 17th 2020 and the youth Voter’s register has 7,846,373 registered voters.
Conclusion:
The Constitution in articles 21, 38, 29, 36, 30 and 80 guarantees rights for anyone to run for a position of leadership. These articles among others provide for the protection against any form of discrimination, provide for civic and political rights and set out qualifications for one to be eligible to run for office.
