‘The people of Kampala voting for you is one thing.getting announced is another.,’ were some of the words of the new Lord Mayor-elect, Mr Ronald Balimwezo, shortly after Ms Jennifer Kyobutungi, the Returning Officer of Kampala Electoral District, declared him the winner on Friday, shortly before midnight. Mr Balimwezo, the flag bearer of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party, swept the board, trouncing his eight challengers with a margin of nearly 100,000 votes in a contest that had earlier been billed as ‘tight.’ He garnered a total of 141,220 votes, while his closest challenger, Mr Moses Kizito Nsubuga of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), managed 43,615 votes.
The incumbent Lord Mayor, Mr Erias Lukwago, came in third with 41,915 votes. The rest of the candidates collectively scraped together fewer than 5,000 votes. Despite earlier informal reports from polling stations on Thursday evening suggesting he was in pole position, Mr Balimwezo was among the first to arrive at Makerere University Business School (MUBS), where the final tallying was conducted. At around 7pm, Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Norbert Mao, whose wife Beatrice Mao was also in the race, arrived and jokingly remarked, ‘.you may receive the shock of your life..’ A few minutes later, the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Mr Joel Ssenyonyi, also arrived, followed by other dignitaries.
As the night wore on, entry into the venue became tighter than a drum. Those without accreditation passes were turned away, and it took the intervention of the Electoral Commission’s Public Relations Department to usher in stranded journalists. Isuzu trucks carrying boxes of Declaration Forms trickled in, each escorted by at least two police constables. At around 8:30pm, Mr Balimwezo, accompanied by his wife and officials, arrived at the tally centre. He made the rounds of all the tents erected for the process, determined to keep his finger on the pulse of events. Like the parliamentary polls tallying at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds a week earlier, the EC at MUBS had erected nine tents to aid the lord mayoral vote tallying process.
Five were allocated to the city divisions of Nakawa, Kawempe, Makindye, Rubaga, and Kampala Central, each manned by a presiding officer. Results were later relayed to the main tent, the Kampala Electoral Declaration Centre, for final announcements. Mr Balimwezo paced back and forth between these five tents until the declaration time. The remaining tents were designated for receiving forms, security, media personnel, and service providers. At 9pm, Ms Kyobutungi welcomed everyone and explained the process. At this point, no other candidate had shown up apart from Mr Balimwezo. Armed with copies of declaration forms collected from agents at polling stations, campaign agents took their seats in the Division tents, and the tallying began at around 10:30pm.
Each tent had a sound system to allow presiding officers to read results aloud, while agents followed closely to cross-check. The process was smooth sailing through the night, with agents largely in agreement. By Friday morning, provisional results displayed on large TV screens showed Mr Balimwezo ahead by 30,000 votes. By 6am, he had opened an unassailable lead with 46,231 votes, while Mr Lukwago trailed with 13,186. At that point, 846 of the 2,705 polling stations had been tallied. But as the day wore on, cracks began to show. The Kawempe tent, already notorious for chaos during parliamentary tallying at Kololo, once again became a hotbed of contention.
The presiding officer read results showing Mr Lukwago or Mr Nsubuga with 300 votes against Mr Balimwezo’s paltry 19, sparking outrage among agents. Initially, she entertained objections and set aside disputed forms, but as the disputes dragged on, patience wore thin. NRM agents lost their cool and attempted to fight their colleagues, forcing security personnel to step in and restore calm. No visible agent of Mr Lukwago was present, but NRM agents fought tooth and nail whenever NUP agents challenged results read in his favour. At one point, the Kawempe presiding officer refused to listen to NUP agents, prompting Mr Balimwezo to storm in from the Kampala Central tent. With fire in his eyes, he stood before her table and shouted ‘objection’ several times.
The video of this dramatic moment has since gone viral on social media. Elsewhere, Nakawa tent saw tempers flare as NUP agents accused the EC of cooking results for the Female Lord Councillor Women’s seat. Reports claimed Ms Doreen Kaija, the incarcerated former head of the NUP Leadership Institute, had been awarded zero votes at Mbuya Barracks, while her NRM rival secured 900. At the Rubaga Division tent, NUP candidate Julius Katongole was forced to kneel before the presiding officer after discovering false results. He questioned how the NRM candidate could bag 400 votes in polling stations where fewer than 200 people had turned up. He lost the race.
By 2 pm, Balimwezo’s lead had ballooned to more than 70,000 votes, but he remained glued to the tally centre. Ms Kyobutungi began announcing winners of councillor races in Makindye, where NUP was sweeping the board. Tallying continued until around 7 pm, when 91 per cent of polling stations had been tallied, and the TV screens were abruptly switched off. After declaring winners of various positions, Ms Kyobutungi finally announced Mr Balimwezo as the new Lord Mayor. Thereafter, Mr Balimwezo said, ‘You know, first and foremost, I would like to appreciate God, because it has been God. And second, my political head, His Excellency, Bobi Wine, who thought it wise for me to get the NUP card and be able to represent my party as a leader. Then, thirdly, the people of Nakawa who have nurtured me into a good politician.’