With just two days to the nomination of presidential candidates, Electoral Commission has sent back several opposition parties to the districts to get more valid signatures of voters seconding the nomination of their presidential candidates.
Some of the affected parties are Forum for Democratic Change, Uganda People's Congress, People's Progressive Party and Uganda Federal Alliance. Information from the EC indicates that the invalid signatures were detected during the ongoing verification exercise at the Electoral Commission headquarters on Jinja road.
Charles Ochola, the EC spokesman told URN last evening that EC had not passed signatures of the mandatory 75 districts, required from each candidate. Ochola said that EC had only passed signatures from 32 districts for FDC Olara Otunnu 42, Betty Kamya 33 and Bidandi Ssali 24.
According to Ochola, signatures submitted from some districts were found to be invalid, while some voters had wrong identification numbers. Ochola cited the example of Koboko district, where the FDC collected 149 signatures but only 98 were found valid, two short of the required number.
He said that the candidates have no choice but to run to the various districts to collect the signatures before the nomination dates because it's a mandatory requirement. Ochola said that official letters informing the candidates about the anomalies have already been sent out to their parties.
He said Otunnu whose letter could not be delivered to him personally had been informed by phone. Alice Alaso, the FDC secretary general confirmed to URN that she had received the EC letter and dispatched a team to collect more signatures. Alaso expressed disappointment with the EC saying that most of the anomalies did not warrant the invalidation of the signatures because they were small mistakes made by illiterate voters in the villages.
By last evening she had already collected signatures from 20 districts. It was not possible to get Betty Kamya, Olara Otunnu and Bidandi as their phones were switched off in the evening.
