Makerere University guild presidential elections annulled

Mixed reports continue to trickle in indicating that the Makerere University electoral commission’s results of the 2016/2017 guild presidential race which gave Bazil Mwotta victory with a slight margin over close rival Ssemboga Roy have been overturned.

This follows a petition lodged on Monday last Week by Roy with the election petitions’ tribunal established under Art. 80 of the amended Guild Constitution alleging a number of irregularities at the College of Education where Bazil garnered over 1700 votes compared to Roy’s dismal 64 votes.

In his petition, Roy accused the presiding officers at the College of flouting electoral rules, complained about the beating amd chasing away from the polling station of his polling agents by supporters of Bazil’s camp, cited inconsistencies in the declared results, and insisted that 1000 people cannot have voted within a space of 8 hours.

The tribunal late Monday convened in the guild offices and redid the counting of votes in one of the ballot boxes containing ballot papers from the college in a bid to “establish the extent of the malpractices”.

During the recounting, which Bazil allegedly refused to attend, the tribunal allegedly discovered that Roy had more than 200 votes from one of the two polling stations at the College of Education, contrary to what the electoral commission had declared.

Another contestant, Ssenyonga Simon, the 3rd runner up, who had been declared to have gotten zero votes from the College was found to have received over 30 votes from just this polling station. Simon, who had earlier conceded defeat gracefully, condemned the latest revelations in a 01:00a.m. Facebook post.

It is against this backdrop that the election tribunal has deemed it fit to cancel results from the College of Education although by press time this was yet to be communicated formally.

Whereas some sources say the tribunal intends to declare Roy the validly elected guild president, because without results from the College of Education Roy would be comfortably in the lead with over 1000 votes, others insist that a special re-election is to be ordered at the College of Education since it would not only be unfair to deny Bazil the support of his college but would also disenfranchise the over 5000 potential voters there.

Whatever the official announcement of the tribunal, it is undeniable that the two warring camps invested huge sums of money in the guild campaigns and thus any of the two being declared loser is something they will not easily concede.