The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
When is a candidate by another name not the same candidate?
Kampala, Uganda | RONALD MUSOKE | The people of Pallisa District were scheduled to go to the polls on June 28 to elect their Woman MP. But the Electoral Commission quashed it when it annulled the FDC candidate, Catherine Achola Osupelem’s nomination and declared Faith Alupo of the NRM unopposed.
Justice Simon Byabakama Mugenyi, the EC chairperson said in a statement that the EC had disqualified Achola from the race because the names on her nomination papers did not match those on her academic papers.
While Achola’s academic documents bear the name “Achola Catherine,” she appears as “Achola Catherine Osupelem” on the voter’s register, the EC said.
The events moved swiftly. Charles Rebero, the Pallisa District Returing Officer, declared Alupo winner on Tuesday June 19 and three days later, on Friday June 22, she was sworn in as the new Pallisa Woman MP in the Speaker’s Chambers in Parliament. To compare, Paul Mwiru of FDC won the Jinja Municipality East MP seat on March 15, he was sworn-in two weeks later, on March 27.
The Pallisa District Woman MP seat fell vacant following the former Woman MP, Agnes Ameede’s decision to shift to the newly created Butebo District which has been carved out of Pallisa. The nullification of Achola and the abrupt end to the Pallisa by-election has left many questions.
The EC had on June 05 declared Achola duly nominated after she, supposedly met all requirements; including that she must be a registered voter in the constituency. Initially the race had attracted five contestants but three pulled out. The question is why the EC waited two weeks after the nominations, with just nine days to the polls to annul Achola’s candidature?
Crispin Kaheru, the Coordinator of the Citizens Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU), an alliance which brings together over 800 civil society organizations that monitor elections in the country says he is not sure the EC has ever quashed the candidature of a nominee as it has done in Pallisa to nullify Achola.
“If you look at the technical grounds upon which the EC used to nullify the FDC candidate’s nomination, they seem very weak and not backed up by precedent,” he told The Independent on July 02.
Kaheru said in late 2017, a similar case was brought before Court by the contestants in the Buikwe election, but the Court of Appeal ruled that a change or tweak in name cannot cause someone’s nullification from an electoral process for as long as they can show that they followed formal procedures to either remove or add a name.
Another case was in the Kibanda North petition between Sam Otada Amooti and Taban Amin where Otada petitioned High Court in Masindi to cancel Taban’s win, on ground that he used two different names on two separate legal documents.
Kaheru says the EC has either been misled or acted in a way that does not conform to past court rulings on such issues. He says, moreover, the electoral body has a judge as its head.
On June 21, Achola filed a suit at the High Court in Kampala saying she was duly nominated by the EC on June 05. She says she was, therefore, shocked when the EC later cancelled her candidature following a complaint by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.
That complaint was filed on June 11 by the NRM’s directorate legal services saying Achola was illegally nominated yet she does not possess the required qualification to contest for the seat.
The NRM says by the time of registering for her National Identification card, the FDC candidate adopted the name Osupelem on her other name of Catherine Achola that appears on all academic transcripts and certificates.
NRM’s “cowardly” act
Achola told The Independent on June 29 that she adopted her father’s name in 2015 at the time of registration for the national ID.
“They just feared to lose,” she told The Independent, “They still believe Pallisa is NRM which is not the case.”
“And the people who think it is their duty that NRM remains dominant in Pallisa could not afford to take the shame. People are not happy with what is happening in NRM.”
Dan Mugarura, the FDC electoral commission chairman also told The Independent on July 02 that what happened in Pallisa is “daylight robbery.”
“Achola just added her father’s name on her document and she swore affidavits for it,” he said, “So she is still the same person in everything except the additional name and it had already been judged (in Court) that adding a name does not change a person.”
