President Yoweri Museveni has partly blamed the loss that the NRM candidate suffered in the just concluded Rukungiri Woman MP race to the intimidation from elements in the opposition.
Yesterday, voters in Rukungiri took to the polls to elect the Woman MP. The top contenders included NRM’s Winfred Masiko and FDC’s Betty Muzanira Bamukwatsa.
Out of the total 98,167 valid votes cast, Betty Muzanira garnered 50,611 votes beating Masiko who polled 46,379 votes with a difference of 4,232 votes.
The other contestants in the race Kukundakwe Fabith got 183 votes whhile Prisca Sezi Mbaguta got 993.
While the opposition had in the lead up to the voting decried alleged heavy security deployment in Rukungiri which they said was a plot by the state intended to intimidate voters, President Museveni has instead turned the blame on the opposition.
He said in a statement released on Friday that NRM lost the election partly because of the intimidation of their supporters by what he called hooligans from Kampala.
“I congratulate the NRM mobilisers in Rukungiri District for the good work they did in the elections of Woman MP yesterday,” Museveni said in a statement.
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He cited religious and tribal divisions among the leaders of the NRM in Rukungiri as having affected the result.
“Inspite of the divisions among the NRM leaders and attempts to use religion (Catholics vs Protestants) and tribe (Bakiga vs Bahororo-Banyakore), Hon Masiko Winfred won in 114 polling stations out of the total of 280, albeit sometimes, with less majority than before,” Museveni said.
“Due to the weakness on the side of the police and the NRM leaders, I also hear that there was intimidation of voters by hooligans from Kampala and other areas”.
Election observers, CCEDU in their analysis of the election indeed pointed out that “the religious factor was eminent” in the election as “candidates exploited religious denominations lines during campaigns”.
Crispin Kaheru the Coordinator of CCEDU added that incidents of electoral violence, intimidation, vote rigging, voter bribery, misuse of state resources during campaigns, the question of hate speech during elections characterized the exercise.
Museveni has saluted those who defied those odds and voted for the NRM.
Regardless of having lost the Woman MP seat to the FDC, the President says his programmes of wealth creation for the masses, especially the youth, will continue.
“Some of those groups helped in winning some parts of the municipality. Winning in the big sub-counties of Nyakishenyi and Nyarushanje is on account of the steadfastness of our supporters inspite of the confusion among the leaders,” he said.
Rukungiri becomes the third Parliamentary seat the NRM have lost in a by-election since the 2016 general elections, after Jinja East and Igara East. Out of the three seats, two have been lost to FDC and one to an Independent candidate.