2021 election budget

Poor planning

Perry Aritua, the executive director of Women’s Democracy Network –Uganda has been watching the back-and-forth debate with amusement. She told The Independent on Feb.03 that what is happening at the moment is a case of poor planning.

“The EC is mandated by the Constitution to conduct elections every five years and the commission came up with its roadmap almost three years ago showing all the activities it needed to do ahead of the general elections.”

“The Electoral Commission was very clear on its activities but now the Finance ministry appears shocked at the EC’s budget.”

Aritua says the finance ministry is just giving Ugandans excuses.

“If this was an epidemic we would understand. It is unfortunate that the EC has been put in this kind of quagmire,” Aritua told The Independent.

For Cissy Kagaba, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Coalition-Uganda (ACCU), she says she has got the impression that elections are not after all a priority of the government.

“We are talking about democracy and we are talking about particular elements that are supposed to be in place for an election to be deemed credible,” she told The Independent, “If this was Security or the Defence Budget, do you think the government would say, reduce, reduce?”

Election roadmap

One of the assumptions made by the EC in its roadmap was that the government would provide timely and adequate funding for it to implement its activities ahead of the 2021 general elections which include among others overseeing the election of the president, MPs, district, youth and special interest group leaders.

A total of 1,539,861 positions are expected to be filled in elections that will run in 141 districts, municipalities (80), counties (200), sub-counties (2000), parishes (9500), villages (65200) and polling stations (35,000).

While launching the EC’s strategic plan and roadmap to the 2021 general elections in December, 2018, Justice Byabakama said the budget for the strategic plan had been reached at after extensive research and consultation of various stakeholders.

He said the EC had studied recommendations from various national and international election observer reports as well as the recommendations from the Supreme Court rulings.

The EC estimated the cost of the presidential, parliamentary and local government council elections to be about Shs 720.14bn while Shs 92.23bn was put on organizing elections for youth, people with disability and older persons councils and committees/associations, representative of professional bodies while election of LCI, II and women councils/committees from village to national level elections was estimated to cost Shs 55.77bn bringing the total cost to about Shs 868.14billion, about the same amount allocated to the all-important Ministry of Agriculture in the 2020/21 national budget. Agriculture got Shs950 billion.

The EC says Shs 868.14 billion is sufficient amount to organize the 2021 elections, an increase of Shs 448.24bn from the Shs 419.9bn that was spent on the 2016 elections. The Shs 868.14bn is part of the total amount of Shs 1.5 trillion budget for the implementation of the EC’s four year strategic plan (2018/19 to 2021/2022).

Since, organizing and conducting presidential, parliamentary and local government council elections is a huge and expensive exercise, particularly when it is funded in one year, the EC officials said the strategic plan was designed to enable phased funding of key election activities to reduce funding pressure on government and facilitate the commission to conduct the elections in a smooth manner.

The roadmap was intended to enable the government and other stakeholders in the electoral process to achieve better planning, better implementation, better activity coordination, timely implementation of scheduled electoral activities and transparency in implementation of programmes and activities.

The roadmap, the EC officials said, was a clear reminder to all stakeholders in the electoral process to start planning to ensure a smooth democratic process.

Following the end of the 2016 electoral cycle, the commission with support from UNDP conducted post-election evaluation workshops across the country in regards to the 2016 general elections. The commission also assessed itself by engaging its own staff on the conduct of the last general elections and subsequent elections and by-elections.

In those engagements, the commission identified delayed enactment/amendment of the electoral laws, continuous creation of administrative units, inadequate training of temporary election officials, inadequate voter education; staffing gaps in the organization as key challenges. All these were as a result of inadequate funding of the commission.

“The commission appeals to the government, particularly cabinet and legislature, to ensure timely amendment and/or enactment of the relevant electoral laws, including consideration of recommendation of the Supreme Court.”

“This is important and urgent, because any amendment in electoral laws will have to take into consideration, the electoral roadmap, the procurement timeframes in accordance with PPDA requirements, the Supreme Court decision which affected the period for candidates’ campaign meetings and the impact on the overall election budget.”

In an attempt to justify the budget, the officials at the Electoral Commission pointed to the ever changing economic environment which increases the cost of conducting elections.

It is not yet clear how the lack of enough money has affected the activities at the EC. However, the commission had anticipated the National Voters Register which it said is the cornerstone for free, fair and transparent elections to be ready by May, 2020.

It had also hoped to comply with Section 33 (3) of the Electoral Commission Act to gazette and publicizing polling stations at least 60 days before the displays of the Voters’ Register. Preparatory activities for the display of the register should have been completed by the first week of January this year.

This includes the appointment of tribunal members by the judiciary, recruitment and training of display officials. Enactment/amendment of enabling laws which the EC forwarded to the government should have been ready in February, 2019.

There is continuous creation of administrative units (villages, parishes/wards, sub-counties, towns, municipal divisions, districts) but the EC demarcates electoral areas based on existing administrative units. The EC recommended to the government not to create any new administrative units beyond February last year.

The roadmap, the EC said, was designed to result into more informed electorate while a more credible and accessible voter register and timely procurement of materials and equipment would ensure the delivery of free, fair and transparent elections.

****