Fellow citizens. As the country votes tomorrow, vigilance is key. Every citizen could help meticulously cross-check all numbers being declared by the Electoral Commission (EC). It is our civic duty to do so. While we imagine that vote rigging is about ballot stuffing, the big theft is done by reading numbers cooked from thin air. The best example is 2006 when Dr. Besigye won a particular polling station with 500 votes against Mr. Museveni's 17 votes. What was later announced is that Museveni had won 500 votes and that Besigye had got 0 votes. On the ground all goes well during vote counting, but then the EC Chairman announces results concocted at his office. That's the real vote rigging/election theft. Usually the votes are fairly safe at the District level if they are followed meticulously. It is at the EC headquarters that numbers get blurred in tallying and false results get easily inserted/declared. That is exactly what happened in Kenya and ignited their infamous 2008 post-election violence. The Chairman was caught live on national television reading false results. Attempts to stop him were made. He was whisked upstairs to a special room from where he cut short the process by immediately declaring his winner. This sparked violence. I was in Nairobi at the time watching it all from home. I however am glad to see Ugandan citizens already cross-checking the numbers produced by our Electoral Commission. A serious discrepancy of 20,000 "ghost votes" was recently unearthed from the voters register numbers by an alert lady. That is the sharpness the country needs to maintain during every electoral exercise. It is quite amazing though that the EC is now openly synonymous with rigging and hardly able to hide the now endemic cronyism. Favoritism in western countries is usually done covertly and few officials are foolish enough to show open partiality. However here, it is the opposite. Loyalism has taken center stage and many state agents are struggling to prove their loyalty by openly favoring their incumbent boss. This is mostly done by openly and highhandedly curbing his opponents. It is lsaid to be a survival mechanism within the establishment. Mostly for job security or as a career advancement strategy. This shows shortsightedness, selfishness, and an increasing lack of sound political principals. Particularly disturbing is the fact that highly educated people are putting all their intellect into linguistically justifying what simply shouldn't be happening (i.e. the recent killing of an innocent, unarmed civilian citizen who was simply supporting an opposition candidate. He was murdered by fascist state agents in cold blood). It was ordinary citizens who were appalled by what they saw and who then exposed this sad event with pictures and video. Other ordinary citizens, both men and women, were seen recording the events that erupted at Kisseka on Monday. This shows the peoples need to share everything that goes wrong with this electoral process. The civilian population is increasingly appearing more patriotic and activist in spirit than state agents. Exposing malpractices helps make the process better for the future, and while the citizens want long term peace and stability, what they really first want at this time is a just electoral exercise.
Good Luck and God Bless Uganda!
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