Elections in most African countries have totally lost meaning and it seems to me, the very thought
of an Electionyear
in my country Uganda makes
me very angry because thevotes no
longer matters in deciding who should rule the country.
One
of the most notorious conduits to
Election malpractices is theAppointing
Officer who vets and designates Chairpersons andofficials
of the National
Electoral Commissions. It is now an open
secret that the ruling party
and the sitting Presidents inmost African
Countries conspire to plant their loyal agents into theoffices of the Chairpersons of Electoral bodies
deliberately tomismanage and rig elections for those who appointed them.
In my country, we were privy to the broad-day
light riggingof votes by the Managers of the
Electoral process over the last two national Elections of 2001 and 2006. The
Ruling Party,the National
Resistance Movement of President Museveni has slowlyeffectively dragged the police and the Army
into the electoral process.This would not have been a problem if there was impartiallyin the mentality of
these forces-sadly, they are not an impartial force,they prescribe to the
political mind set of the ruling party and theyhave personal loyalties to the President and not the
Institution of the Presidency. The end
results have not only been intimidationof voters, harassment of oppositions
but also out right ballot box stuffing. In one of the Polling stations in
the central region of Uganda, voterswho lined up to vote were sterned senseless, when and armed plaincloth
operative grabbed a ballot box in front of a long queue of votersand sped off with the contents. The box was
later found with stuffedballots, but they
were still counted anyway!
The area that invariably shades my tears for
democracy in my country and similar African countries like
Zimbabwe and Nigeria is the use of money to buy votes. The
political elites have actually learnt
to perpetuate themselves in power
not by their effective delivery
on their election manifestos, but by buying votes from the people they have deliberately kept
in the poverty
trap to make them vulnerable to corrupt
tendencies during an election year. Peasants, who are the
poorest of the poorare
given little pieces of soap, salt, sugar, alcohol on theelection eve.
Millions of shillings are splashed at the votersovernight
and the candidate who spends most takes the day nomatter how
inept he looks enroute the National Parliament!
This culture of staying in power at all costs in
shrewd andundemocratic
ways is perfected by the Electoral commissions during the declaration of results. The
campaign agents of thedifferent
opposition parties receive actual figures of votes scored,but
the Chairpersons of the Electoral commissions announce their
own versions on the national radios which are usually a far cry
from the actual votes on the ground!
Vote
rigging and outright stealing of votes is an absolute
mockery of democracy which suggests very strongly
that in countries where the practices have been
systemized like Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea,Cameroon, Chad just to mention a few, there cant be
a free and fair electionand
every election year seem to be a waste of national resources that could better be used to improve the social
services for the people!