The Electoral Commission (EC), has issued a road map for the Local Council 1and Women Council elections and set it for November 21, 2017. Last week the EC Chairperson, Justice Simon Byabakama, said the election programme will be kicked off on October 11th.
The EC has subsequently issued an “approved programme” for these. Accordingly, the exercise starts with the recruitment of the village election officers. There will then be a display of the names of these at the parish offices before they are trained.
At the end of October, there will be the verification of the village voter’s register, and its display, before the nomination forms for the intending candidates are issued. The campaigns will then kick-off in of November.
After the LCI polls, the LC11 in which the positions for the women are involved, will be held. This will be kicked-off and will follow the method used for the LC I polls. And the elections for the LC 11 chairpersons will be held on December 7, 2017.
The mode of the LC1 elections will not be by a secret ballot as the Local Government Act Section 111(2), has mandated.
It says: “Election of village or cell council and parish or ward council chairperson shall be by the electorate lining behind the candidates nominated for the office.” Byabakama ratified this saying, “The election shall be by voters lining behind the nominated candidates or their representatives.”
The EC estimates that the lining, voting and actual vote counting will only take 30 minutes in all the 59,315 counted villages of Uganda. Said Byabakama,
“We thought 30 minutes will be enough to avoid people keeping in the line for long.” And the EC estimates to spend UGX 12.17 bn. on both Local Council 1 and Local Council 2 polls.
According to the EC press release, the stakeholders in the process are requested to act in accordance with the guidelines which have been released.
