President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, also NRM Chairman has accepted defeat in the just concluded Arua Municipality parliamentary by-election, where incarcerated independent candidate Hon. Kassiano Wadri, was declared the winner and the Nusura Tiperu of the NRM came second.
In what appears to be a letter of concession, the president said it is a step-forward, to have elections without violence, without threats, and that nobody has got a right to intimidate a Ugandan by word or action.
According to the president, several voters did not turn up at polling stations due to the violence that preceded the election. “Out of the 46,000 registered voters, only 16,000 turned out to vote. Only 34% of the electorate. The others either feared to come to vote or the register is full of ghosts” Museveni added.
Currently, NRM is investigating allegations that some candidates had imported illegal voters from other areas to the municipality. The president says opposition has been doing this repeatedly, such as in Jinja East and Bugiri Municipality.
“The NRM agents have got a weakness of not auditing the voters' registers in time to discover these imported voters. In the case of Arua Municipality, there is an allegation that the illegal voters were brought to the attention of the Electoral Commission but that it did not pay heed” he added.
He warned that the cases of terrorism, damaging property, manslaughter etc against the Hons: Wadri, Bobi Wine, etc will continue. Their actions led to the death of a Ugandan, injury of a number of others and damage to property, so the allegations go.
All those leaders, including the NRM members, should never encourage their supporters to violate the law, let alone themselves violating the law.
“I never organize processions. I always drive to and from the rally site in my convoy. Sometimes, only the boda boda riders join me. The convoy moves fairly fast to the rally site and from the rally site, never touching the passers-by, the property of the people or the convoys of the other candidates.”
The president gave an example of himself and former Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi when their convoys met in Naguru during the 2016 presidential election campaign, “We just waved at one another and that was all” He said.
