Having Produced Evidence That He Won, Fred Nyanzi Asks Court to Kickout NRM’s Madina Nsereko & Declare Him Kawempe South MP Without Ordering By-Elections

In a voluminous petition of 604 pages, Bobi Wine’s brother Fred Nyanzi Ssentamu has tabled his very incriminating evidence unequivocally demonstrating how he won the Kawempe South MP race with a total 18,591 votes only for the Electoral Commission to controversially declare NRM’s Madina Nsereko Ntale who actually polled 11,292 votes.

Using his Declaration of Results (DR) forms, whose contents corroborate what each of the other 10 candidates collected from the field through their polling agents, Nyanzi demonstrates that Madina Nsereko’s controversial win was an outcome of unprecedented levels of results’ falsification, forgeries, voter disenfranchisement and willful switching of results by the Returning Officer who, he says, was determined to deliver a win for the NRM candidate even when she clearly didn’t have adequate support to carry the day.

He claims, and goes on to corroborate using the hundreds of affidavits deponed by his witnesses, that in many cases the authentic DR forms, collected from each of the 212 polling stations making up the constituency, were disregarded whereafter the Returning Officer proceeded to rely on strange tally sheets whose contents left all the other fellow candidates mystified, with the exception of the NRM candidate herself who stood to benefit from the impugned mischief.

Nyanzi, whose claims have since been corroborated by all the other fellow candidates except Madina Nsereko, says that results from 47 polling stations (having a total of 32,860 eligible registered voters) were excluded in the final tally and enumerates all these polling stations. He goes ahead to disclose the actual number of votes each of the candidates scored at those 47 polling stations, clearly putting him in comfortable lead as Madina Nsereko and others trailed.

He contends this amounted to willful disenfranchisement contrary to the clear provisions of the law under Sections 77(i) and 94 of the Parliamentary Elections Act. He wants the Returning Officer personally punished and criminally prosecuted for such willful noncompliance with clear legal provisions.

That if the results from those 47 stations had been included, he would have defeated Nsereko hands down. Nyanzi reveals that he tried to put up a fight at the tally centre, supported by fellow candidates, only for the military and police to violently herd him out of the venue.

According to Nyanzi, the illegally excluded 47 polling stations came from the following parishes: Bwaise II, Makerere II, Makerere III, Mulago II, Muluka I, Muluka II, Muluka III and Muluka IV. His filed petition shows that he won at most of these polling stations, with exception of some few.

He adds that this exclusion of the 47 polling stations diminished his final tally by 2,793 votes which was his actual score there as per the returned DR forms, compared to Nsereko’s 2,164 votes. He asserts that this substantially affected the final electoral outcome. He says this disenfranchisement violated Article 49 of the Constitution.

He says the EC bosses stole an elephant and are now fidgeting on how to hide it, to the extent that when he wrote to them asking for the certified copies of the DR forms, to enable him prepare his petition, they only managed to avail him 165 DR forms out of the 212 that are supposed to exist for Kawempe South.

The number of DR forms has to match with the number of polling stations, which is not the case with Kawempe South. Yet that isn’t the only discrepancy engulfing the EC. Nyanzi’s filed court documents indicate that the results reflected on the transmission of results form(s) conspicuously differs from what is reflected on the final results tally sheet, which has to be the basis of the results published in the gazette indicating who won in which constituency.

That in total contravention of Section 97 of the relevant Act, the Returning Officer willfully entered inaccurate results for a total of five polling stations, which is an electoral offence for which Nyanzi wants him to be personally prosecuted. Examples include Bwaise III’s St. James Church polling station where Nsereko scored 37 votes, as per the authentic DR forms, yet the Returning Officer allegedly added a 2 and allocated her 237 votes.

At Mulago I’s Polio Clinic polling station she scored 92 votes as per the DR forms but was allocated 312 votes. At Makerere II’s Caltech play ground polling station, the well-witnessed DR form shows she got 23 votes but ended up being allocated 320 votes! Polled 49 votes at Makerere II’s Mutigwedembe polling station which was altered to 210, according to Nyanzi’s petition. Polled 204 at Mulago II’s Kainamula’s Place polling station, which was altered to 274 votes.

Nyanzi also discloses 20 polling stations (Jambula, St. Emanuel College, Liberty Primary School, Umar Nyago Parking Yard, Yiga’s Parking Yard etc) where his combined total score of 1,736 votes was allegedly hijacked and given to NRM’s Madina Nsereko whose true score had been 762. This, he asserts, enabled her get 974 fictitious votes. He enumerates several other polling stations where such fraudulent switching of his results was replicated.

He also complains about another 53 polling stations were forged results were used to disadvantage him in favour of the NRM candidate Madina Nsereko who ended up getting a total of 9,755 votes which was an outcome of nothing but total fiction coupled with alteration, manipulation and falsification of results in direct contravention of clear legal provisions.

That the so-called certified copies of the DR forms, from which the EC claims to have derived those 9,755 votes for Madina Nsereko, materially differs from the genuine DR forms which the polling agents of Nyanzi and those of other candidates returned from the field for the 53 impugned polling stations. He lists all these polling stations as part of his affidavit evidence accompanying the petition whose contents will make it next to impossible for even the most enthusiastic and effective cadre judge to find a way to shield Madina Nsereko, the respondent.

WHAT HE PRAYS FOR:

All in all, Nyanzi implores the Court to allow his petition to succeed and accordingly declare that there was widespread noncompliance with the legal provisions that was substantial enough to alter the final outcome of the election, that the EC & its area returning officer committed glaring offences in the conduct of Kawempe South MP’s elections, set aside Madina Nsereko’s election and declare him as the duly elected area MP and go on to declare and direct that the petitioner Fred Nyanzi gets declared the duly elected Kawempe South MP while directing the EC to gazette and have him sworn in by Parliament so that he starts serving his people.

Nyanzi has assembled a total of three big-name Kampala law firms in order to successfully prosecute his petition. These are Buganda Road-based Elgon Advocates, Bunga Makindye-based Onyango & Co Advocates and Parliamentary Avenue/Raja Chambers-based Ahamark Advocates.

Besides praying for costs for his petition, against the respondent Madinah Nsereko, Fred Nyanzi also implores Court to order for the criminal prosecution of the Returning Officer so that he gets to personally account and pay for his wrongful actions, which allegedly amounted to criminal connivance against the well-expressed will of the voters of Kawempe South constituency.