Elections conducted peacefully - Police

Reports from police have revealed that there was no scandal or any form of indiscipline registered during and after the elections. This was disclosed during a phone interview The New Times had with the Acting Commissioner General of Police, Mary Gahonzire. “We were also surprised! We have not registered any form of indiscipline, both at the polling stations and in the communities as it normally happens,” said Gahonzire. “At times it so happens that people go out and fight in bars and in homes due to the emotions raised by elections, but this time around we have not even registered any bar fights,” added the police boss. She went a head and commended every institution that took part in the elections, for the orderliness and general sanity they brought to the process. “Where I voted from, the polling agents were so organized , nowith no long queues and I was so impressed that even people who lost their cards voted, because the polling authorities took an extra mile to check on the lists,” commended Gahonzire. The Army spokes person Jill Rutaremara, expressed the same thing, underscoring that according to his observation people participated peacefully in both parts of elections. “People participated peacefully and there was a general harmonious feeling in the elections”elections,” he observedsaid the army spokesman. When asked about how the army undertook the voting activity and how they witnessed the process, he said that the army just like any other citizen, it followed the normal procedure. “And they voted normally, after showing their voters cards,” he explained. However, there were a few cases of people mostly from Kampala who didn’t vote following as a result of their names missing on the voters’ lists. When we asked for clarification by The New Times, the acting Executive Secretary of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Charles Munyaneza, he attributed it to the fact that many did not register for voting, owing it to the fact that some stay in far awayplaces from Kampala where the embassy is. “Just like in any other country, Uganda has many Rwandans, most of the spread out in distant parts of the country. Not all of them were expected to vote, since many of them didn’t even register for voting, but many of those who registered and turned up and voted,” clarified Munyanezahe explained. To further clarify this on the issue, he Munyaneza revealed cited cases of some Rwandans, especially long distance drivers, who voted from the Rwandan embassy in Uganda, yet they didn’t register from there, he cited people like long distance drivers and Rwandan who the election time got in Uganda. When asked whether they registered any scandals at the polling stations, Munyaneza explained that there were no major cases of indiscipline from the public, apart from some few that erupted from the NEC staff in some polling stations. “Since we used volunteers, who also didn’t receive sufficient training in the codes and ethics of how to conduct themselves at polling stations, some of them messed up”up,” he said. He went a head and disclosed that a few of these people masqueraded as representatives of certain parties, a thing that confused voters; others did not attend to voters like they were supposed to. “Some the volunteers were involved in influencing the voters on what to vote, but these were isolated cases and the identified culprits were removed from the polling stations instantly in that it didn’t in any way affect the process,” explained Munyaneza. He thanked the public for the unprecedented turn up at the polling stations, and the fact that they collaborated with the authorities by owning the election process. The turn up of voters was 98 percent breaking the 2003 record of 96 percent. Ends