Two rejected presidential aspirants threaten to sue EC

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Two presidential aspirants have threatened to sue the Electoral Commission for blocking their nomination for 2021 general elections.

They are Elizabeth Nabatanzi Lugudde Katwe and Fred Kyemuko Wokuli from the Revolutionary People’s party –RPP.

The two are part of 23 aspirants who successfully submitted endorsement signatures for their nomination.

Speaking at a joint press briefing at Bweyogerere on Wednesday evening, Jackson Bwanika Zaabike, the RPP general secretary disclosed that they submitted the required signatures in October and after verification, EC tasked them to provide more signatures to replace those rejected.

He explains that they returned to the field and collected more signatures which they submitted to the Commission which kept giving them one excuse after another until the deadline caught up with them.

Wokuli revealed that he had planned to launch a drastic campaign that would shift the concentration of power from one region of the country to the East where he hails from but his dream was cut short.

He threatened to drag EC to court should it fail to provide a satisfactory report on why they were excluded from the nomination.

On her part, Nabatanzi revealed that her campaign team spent a lot of time and resources gathering signatures but she was surprised to see that some presidential aspirants who submitted signatures more later were successfully nominated.

Nabatanzi alleges that the elimination of all other presidential aspirants including her could have been a planned conspiracy between EC and government.

However, the EC Chairperson Justice Simon Byabakama said one of the key reasons why most aspirants were locked out was their failure to present qualifying endorsement signatures.
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