An aspirant for the Makerere University guild presidency in the April 14, 2023 polls has lodged a complaint with the institution’s Guild Elections Petition Tribunal, seeking to overturn the results that declared him the runner-up. Mr. Hillary Oremo Odwee received 2,531 votes in the nine-candidate race and lost to Mr. Robert Maseruka, who won with just 27 more ballots.
In his petition, Mr. Oremo alleges that over 6,000 first-year students, who make up most of his supporters, were disenfranchised. He claims that the first-year students were excluded from the voting process during the allotted time frame of 8 am to 5 pm, which he asserts was discriminatory and violated their fundamental human rights and dignity.
He further contends that the extension of the voting time announced by the guild electoral commission at 5:34 pm on the voting day was too late and came after the first-year students had already been psychologically disoriented and had resigned from the process.
Mr. Oremo also disputes the electoral commission’s claim that he did not receive any votes from the Jinja campus and has obtained sworn testimonies from students indicating otherwise.
He is demanding a fresh election for only first-year students, and that the Directorate of ICT (DICT) provides voting results from the Jinja Campus. He is also requesting that the results announced by the electoral commission be set aside. If the tribunal does not rule in his favor, Mr. Oremo has threatened to take the matter to court.
The electoral commission’s chair, Mr. Levi Tshilumba, has acknowledged that some students were unable to vote due to a technical issue beyond his control, but a solution was found after a thorough investigation.
The university council enacted a new guild statute on September 16, 2022, in which physical elections were suspended after violent campaigns in July 2022 resulted in the death of a second-year law student at Uganda Christian University, Kampala Campus. The university has since held two consecutive virtual guild elections.
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