“Protecting the Gains”: How Uganda’s Elections Are Being Won Without Voting

By Praise Aloikin Opoloje

For the forthcoming general elections, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) adopted the campaign slogan “Protecting the Gains.”

For many Ugandans, however, the gains to be protected are not developmental achievements, nor democratic milestones. The gains, as this story reveals, are parliamentary seat gains. These are the gains being protected.

And it would be overzealous, if not naïve, to assume that these gains are being protected genuinely.

No. The “Independent” Electoral Commission of Uganda, as custodian of the electoral process, is protecting these gains on behalf of the ruling party. The NRM speaks, and the Commission does the dirty work.

The Problem

For the past few weeks, it has been raining heavily across Uganda. But it is not just rain in the literal sense. It has also been raining disqualifications and unopposed nominations in the parliamentary elections.

Candidates are removed from the ballot after successful nomination and just weeks before polling. Uganda is set to hold its general elections in January 2026, beginning with presidential and parliamentary polls on 15 January 2026.

For many opposition candidates and their supporters, there is no hope. And if they did have hope, it is that very hope that will kill them—or is already killing them.

In several constituencies, elections have already been won before polling. They have not been won through persuasion or popular support, but through administrative processes. Central among these is the systematic disqualification of opposition candidates by the Electoral Commission, which has left ruling party incumbents unopposed.

The Disqualifications

The pattern of disqualification has followed a disturbingly consistent plot.

First, candidates are duly nominated by returning officers in their respective constituencies. Campaigns begin, mobilisation starts.

Then, the Electoral Commission disqualifies them. The reasons include but not limited to alleged failure to submit the requisite minimum number of nominators, lack of the prescribed academic qualifications, or failure to attach proof of resignation from public service. The list is long, repetitive, and increasingly familiar, forming a pattern rather than isolated administrative errors. 

The list is long.

Arnold Ankunda, a People’s Front for Freedom (PFF) candidate and a strong challenger to incumbent Bright Rwamirama, the Minister of State for Animal Industry, was disqualified in Isingiro North.

In Buyanja County, Ategeka Christopher of the National Unity Platform (NUP), contesting against Finance Minister Matia Kasaija, was disqualified. NUP president Robert Kyagulanyi later stated on X that Ategeka had refused a UGX 300 million bribe to step down. When this happened, he posted, disqualification followed.

In Isingiro District, Resty Sarah Kyarimpa, NUP’s candidate for Woman Member of Parliament, was disqualified after the Commission claimed one supporter appeared twice on her nomination form, leaving her with nine instead of the required ten seconders. The party disputed this, noting that the Commission uses a computerised system that does not allow a voter to endorse the same candidate twice. The party further stated that Kyarimpa had also been offered money to withdraw, and refused. Disqualification, they argue, was retaliation.

Manufacturing Unopposed Seats

Minister of State for Energy Phiona Nyamutoro

In Nebbi District, Minister of State for Energy Phiona Nyamutoro was declared unopposed after the Commission nullified the nomination of NUP’s Mercy Rebecca Abedican, her only remaining challenger. The Commission held that two of Abedican’s seconders disowned their signatures. 

Yet in a leaked phone recording, Nyamutoro is heard plotting that Abedican should not be nominated, stating it would be “safer” and allow her to mobilise for President Yoweri Museveni.

In Bukedea, Speaker of Parliament Anita Annet Among was declared unopposed after her only challenger, Asio Florence (NUP), failed to appear for nomination. Asio later explained that she withdrew due to family pressure. She said that Among is her “mother”, and that her candidacy had been a last-minute decision unknown to her family.

Earlier still, the Electoral Commission upheld decisions of village tribunals that disqualified Susan Norma Otai (FDC), Hellen Odeke Akol, and Marion Mercy Alupo (NUP). All women that had sought to challenge Among. They were accused of not being registered voters in the relevant parishes, a decision widely criticised as politically motivated to clear the path for the Speaker.

In Buyende East, Among’s husband, Moses Magogo, was declared unopposed after the Commission disqualified Daniel Mulirire, a former police officer, for failing to attach proof of resignation from public service.

Academic Qualifications as a Political Weapon

In Busiro East, NUP candidate Walukaga Mathias, a renowned Kadongo Kamu singer, was disqualified on academic grounds. The Commission ruled that his Mature Age Certificate—issued by the Islamic University in Uganda on 12 June 2023—had expired by the time he presented it for nomination on 23 October 2025.

Walukaga argued that the same certificate had enabled his admission to university and that he possessed an NCHE equivalence letter. The Commission rejected this, holding that equivalence does not itself constitute a qualification.

Legally arguable, yes. But the selective timing is material, in this instance: qualifications are questioned after nomination, not before, which reinforces claims that technical compliance is being deployed retrospectively to eliminate political challengers rather than to uphold electoral integrity.

The Law

The procedure for the nomination of candidates for parliamentary elections is provided for under Section 28 of the Parliamentary Elections Act, Cap. 177.

Under Section 28(1)(c), a person seeking nomination as a candidate for election to Parliament is required to submit nomination papers containing the names and signatures of a minimum of ten persons who are registered voters in the constituency in which the person seeks nomination. Each of the persons endorsing the nomination must state, in the nomination paper, his or her village, occupation, and personal voter registration number.

With respect to academic qualifications, Section 4 of the Parliamentary Elections Act provides for the qualifications and disqualifications of Members of Parliament. Under Section 4(1), a person is qualified to be a Member of Parliament if the person is a citizen of Uganda, is a registered voter, and has completed a minimum formal education of Advanced Level standard or its equivalent.

The Weaponisation of Technicalities

Nomination, I am convinced, is meant to be confirmation—not a trial phase.

If a single supporter can later deny a signature and automatically trigger disqualification, the nomination process becomes structurally vulnerable to manipulation. What should be a safeguard for electoral integrity is instead transformed into a post-nomination veto, exercisable by any individual willing or pressured to recant.

This vulnerability acquires sharper meaning in an environment where coercive power is asymmetrically distributed. Opposition parties do not command the instruments of the state. They cannot summon police, intelligence agencies, or local administrative structures to enforce compliance. Government actors, by contrast, possess both the means and the proximity to make threats credible. When a supporter retracts an endorsement under such circumstances, the act cannot be understood in isolation from the power relations within which it occurs.

This raises a key question: why is due diligence deferred until after nomination? Returning officers are mandated to receive, verify, and confirm nomination papers. If a nomination is accepted, gazetted, and campaigns permitted to proceed, on what basis is the same nomination later re-opened without evidence of fraud established through investigation or judicial process?

There is also the question of plausibility. In constituencies with tens or hundreds of thousands of registered voters, is it genuinely credible that a candidate cannot lawfully secure ten qualified seconders? Or does the repeated invocation of this technical requirement, across multiple constituencies and disproportionately against opposition candidates, suggest a mechanism designed less to enforce compliance than to filter out challengers?

At minimum, methinks, a denied signature should trigger an investigation, including verification of circumstances, timelines, and potential inducement or intimidation. At most, it should require a judicial finding of forgery or fraud. Automatic disqualification, based solely on post-hoc denial, collapses the distinction between allegation and proof.

Under the leadership of Electoral Commission chairperson Simon Byabakama, the Commission continues to make decisions that many view as illegal, partisan, and openly contemptuous of public scrutiny.

Even when Ugandans see it. Even when they know that Ugandans know it.

Protecting the Gains

Where power fears competition, competition is not allowed to stand.

Political battles are being won before voting begins. The system no longer pretends to be non-partisan. It is proudly partisan.

The gains are being protected.
But democracy is paying the price.