Tumukunde given 825 votes in areas where he never had votes

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Independent presidential candidate Henry Tumukunde impressively won a polling station in Entebbe municipality and another in Busiro South county according to the Wakiso district tally sheet from the January 14th presidential elections.

The election final tally sheet shows that Tumukunde won Entebbe Comprehensive Secondary School [A-BUS] with 371 votes representing 62 percent of the total votes cast and Kawafu Namagembe’s place (NAM-Z) with 454 votes representing 51 percent of the total votes cast. These are the only polling stations Tumukunde won across the country according to figures released by the Electoral Commission.

But voters and electoral officials from the area dispute the number of votes awarded to Tumukunde in the tally sheet. They all say that he did not even come close to scoring a tenth of the votes reflected against his name.

Jovan Kasule who was the presiding officer at Entebbe Comprehensive Secondary School [A-BUS] polling station says Tumukunde polled less than four votes. The National Unity Platform (NUP) president Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine won the station with 200 votes which are clearly captured by the EC.

Kalule says that the final tally gave Museveni two votes yet he actually got 148 votes. He also recalls that Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Patrick Amuriat Oboi got 11 votes and the rest of the other candidates polled less than ten votes.

Kalule says he is sure of his figures because he remained with the declaration of results forms for Tumukunde, John Katumba, Nancy Linda Kalembe, Fred Mwesigye, Willy Mayambala and Joseph Kabuleta in his custody because they did not have polling agents at the polling station.

Busingye Bwambale, a polling agent for candidate Museveni at the polling station since 2001, agrees with Kalule, and he was shocked at the figures reflected in the final tally sheet. Due to the shock, he read out the final results to his friend who had been the polling agent of Democratic Party’s Norbert Mao at BUT-KAV polling station, also at Entebbe Comprehensive SSS playground.

Puzzled by data that EC captured, Bwambale and his DP colleague shouted in unison; “Tumukunde did not win anywhere in Entebbe.” He wondered how Tumukunde who scored zero, got 371 votes in the final tally and also noted that the EC tally shows that 597 people voted and yet only 373 turned up that day.

Steven Nyakaana who was the NRM supervisor for the nine polling stations that voted at Entebbe Comprehensive Secondary School playground says that the results he recorded at the time of counting the votes show that Kyagulanyi got 200 votes, and was followed by Museveni with 148 votes. His record also shows that Amuriat polled 11 votes, Mao had three, Katumba had two votes, and Kalembe also had two votes. No other candidate had even a single score.

Isaac Bugembe, the NUP polling agent and Umaru Sserwanga, the DP polling agent at the same polling station also had the same figures, which they say they recorded in their books. But they said they had submitted the declaration forms to the respective political parties.

In a similar way, four agents for several presidential candidates at Kawafu Namagembe’s place (NAM-Z) refuted the EC data saying Tumukunde got no single vote in their area. They also did not present copies of the declaration forms except the results they captured in their notebooks on polling day.

Although they withheld their names for personal security purposes, they accepted to be recorded.

One of the agents told his colleagues who had gathered in front of a retail shop in Abaita Ababiri that the electoral body could have inflated the numbers of voters and awarded Tumukunde a win, where he did not get even a single vote.

They further observed that the votes that were given to candidate Mwesigye actually belonged to Yoweri Museveni. At this polling station, Mwesigye was given 85 votes and the tally captured only two votes for Yoweri Museveni.

In this area, the voters are now living in fear of being picked up by security operatives for voting Kyagulanyi. They recall that on polling day, the entire area experienced heavy deployment in and outside the polling station blocking access for several of those who wanted to witness the counting of ballots.

Meanwhile, Wakiso District Returning Officer Tolbert Musinguzi has also disputed the final tally from the two polling stations. His initial reaction was, “It is not possible because I’m not aware of any polling station where Tumukunde won in Wakiso district. But let me look at the records and get back to you.”

A day later, he maintained his stance saying that the EC final tally figures are not the same as those in the declaration of results forms from the two polling stations. “We tallied using the DR forms which are the legal documents from the polling stations. And what the DR forms from these two polling stations show is that Tumukunde did not win and Museveni got more than two votes.”

Asked why the EC final tally is different from the district tally, Musinguzi suggested that it could have been a typing error after the transmission of results to the national tally centre. As a result, he says the error can only be corrected at the head offices.

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URN