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EC starts verification of administrative units ahead of Women Council, LC 1 & 2 elections
EC Chairman Justice Simon Byabakama Mugenyi
The Electoral Commission (EC) has today March 17, 2022, embarked on an important task of verifying all administrative units in the country in preparation for the conduct of fresh elections for Women Councils as well as elections for village and parish leadership, whose term of office is soon expiring.
According to a Press Statement issued by the Electoral Body recently, the Verification exercise is meant to establish the legality of all the administrative units in the country, especially the newly created units, the correct boundaries of the units, and the correct placement of lower units such as villages into the correct upper units like parishes.
EC says the verification of the administrative units, is among other things, meant to settle disputes and challenges that arose during the previous elections.
“The current Village/Cell (LC1) and Parish/Ward (LC2) committees were elected in July 2018. The above elections were conducted in a total number of 60,800 villages/ Cells and 8387 parishes.
“During the conduct of the above elections, the Commission observed the following challenging issues.
a.Dispute over the legal establishment of some of the villages/cells;
b. Dispute over the names of some of the villages/cells and parishes/wards;
c. Dispute over the boundaries of some of the villages/cells;
d. Dispute over the placement of some villages/cells (within particular sub counties and town councils, etc.,);
e. Dispute over some villages/cells that were located in areas that had been declared as natural reserves and conservation areas (for example in Bukwo District).”
Meanwhile, Different Political parties have started preparations to field candidates to challenge the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party which wields overwhelming majority in the women councils at different levels across the country.
Nonetheless, many women leadership have hinted at petitioning President Yoweri Museveni and Parliament to introduce amendments to the law to extend their term of office, on account their current term was severely interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated lockdown restrictions that hampered execution of their mandates.
Details of the verification exercise can be found in EC’s FULL STATEMENT HERE: EC Starts Verification of Administrative Units
or View Details in Picture Format below
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