EC wants Shs 500million to hold national prayers for peaceful elections

MPs on the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee queried the Shs1.119Tn Electoral Commission (EC) is seeking to start activities for the 2026 general elections.

Leonard Mulekwah, Secretary to Electoral Commission informed Parliament that the Commission’s 2024/25 national budget is grossly underfunded, having been allocated Shs150.183Bn, despite requesting for Shs1.119Trn, thus leaving a funding gap of Shs969.282Bn.

The legislators say it is wasteful and exorbitant to spend Shs18Bn on legal fees for private lawyers and about Shs500M to hold national prayers for peaceful elections

Ndorwa East MP Wilfred Niwagaba questioned the need to spend Shs18Bn on external lawyers when EC’s internal legal department can handle petitions and the likes.

“Why would you need to spend Shs500M on national prayer breakfast for elections? I know this country is prayerful but we always have a national prayer breakfast day can’t we combine that in one? Why would we need new electoral areas, why do we need new constituencies and new electoral areas honestly speaking, is there no way you talk out this Government out of this madness?” said Niwagaba.

Remigio Achia (Pian County) raised concern over the cost of elections in Uganda remarking that the Shs1.1Trn that would have been spared on health and education within the same voters and that is just for Electoral Commission.

“We need to have a discussion on how we can make elections in this country a little cheaper. I don’t know whether we have a research department within the Electoral Commission to see how we can make elections cheaper in our country. I know that democracy is good when it expands our human rights and it expands our expression of opinions but when we look at where to find the money, how best can we make it cheaper?” she said.

Stephen Baka (Bukooli North) however asked MPs not to push the blame of the bloated electoral areas on the Electoral Commission, because most of the decisions taken on creation of new constituencies  are made in Parliament and all that the Commission does is to implement these decisions.

“The problem isn’t Electoral Commission, the problem is us, we are the ones creating constituencies, electoral areas and now seeking to downsize the rest of Government except the political class. So, the problem isn’t Electoral Commission because these people by law are supposed to implement what we have done. So, we have created constituencies even when there shouldn’t. We have created all sorts of offices and even made them to be elective and Electoral Commission has nothing to do except to implement, so the problem is still us. Can we downsize yes, we can make elections cheaper, we can make elections cheaper, yes, cut the offices down.”