BIG STORY: Magistrate Declares Nameere Masaka City MP After Controversial Vote Recount

National Resistance Movement’s Justice Nameere also a daughter to former Minister Vincent Bamulangaki Ssempijja has been declared the winner of the Masaka City Women MP rate after a controversial vote recount handled by Chief Magistrate Albert Asiimwe.

The three-day vote recount exercise which commenced on Friday evening concluded on Sunday night overturned the earlier results by the Electoral Commission which had declared the National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Rose Nalubowa as the winner of the January 15th Elections.

The vote recount was done in what many law experts was an illegal manner since the magistrate found one box broken without a seal. As the recount continued, seven ballot boxes were found empty without ballot papers while two boxes were found with only ballots ticked in favor of NRM’s Nameere alone.

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This alone showed that the ballot boxes were tampered with prior to the recount but the Chief Magistrate continued with the recount which has now set a new precedence. The same Magistrate declined a vote recount in Kalungu East over boxes found with broken seals where Nameere’s father Ssempijja had wanted a recount only to do the opposite under the same circumstances for his daughter.

The Magistrate observed that upon re-examination of all ballot papers from 313 polling stations, the court established that Nameere obtained 25,502 vote, up from the 20,324 votes the Electoral Commission had allocated her in the initial tally. Nalubowa who had initially scored 25,443 votes saw her total reduce to 23,176 votes after the recount.

The other candidates, Juliet Kakande Nakabuye of the Democratic Front (DF) were found to have scored 6,136 votes down from the 6,343 votes initially allocated to her while Sauyah Nanyonga an Independent candidate had originally garnered 6,196 votes but the recount reduced her score to 5,921 votes.

The presiding Magistrate Asiimwe noted that the recount exercise established numerical errors that affected the results during the initial tallying process by the Returning officer which substantially affected the outcome and denied Nameere victory.

Nameere filed for a vote recount in court alleging that the returning officer of Masaka City omitted results from 11 polling station that she had won and reduced her scores at various polling stations which erroneously advantaged the NUP candidate. The trial magistrate held that the re-examination of the ballot boxes satisfied the allegations and thereby declaring Nameere the winner of the polls conducted in the area.