BY DERRICK WANDERA
One windy July morning, as a slight drizzle spattered over the sleek jackets of the officials who attended a standing meeting in the courtyard of the headquarters, Justice Simon Byabakama, the Electoral Commission (EC) Chairman, hurriedly announced the new acting Secretary to the Commission before moved back into his office.
In the middle of an impending scientific 2021 general election, the EC had been hit with baffling news of the departure of four of their staff members. The chairman had to act with speed and accuracy in his choice of replacement.
Although the media indicated that President Museveni had unceremoniously landed the axe on the officials over mismanagement of funds and lack of accountability of the same, the Commission gave a standing statement indicating that the officials had opted to take early retirement from their designations.
Then-Secretary to the Commission, Mr. Sam Rwakoojo, Pontius Namugera (Director of Information Technology), Godfrey Wanyoto (Head of Procurement), and Jotham Taremwa (Head of Public Relations) had been hounded out.
The question of what prompted them to take the seemingly rushed decision is yet to be answered by either President Museveni or Justice Byabakama.
That morning, Justice Byabakama announced that Mr. Leonard Mulekwah then Director of Operations to the Commission would step into the gigantic shoes of the office of Secretary and accounting officer in an acting capacity.
If you asked Mr. Mulekwah how he felt that morning, “This was both shocking and terrifying,” he would say. Thanks to his 17 undisrupted years of experience at the Commission, which according to Justice Byabakama, made his work easy that morning when he realized that he had to chip in.
Road to confirmation
Mulekwah withstood the stormy scientific elections which many actors believe was the most challenging in the history of the country. It is on rare occasions that the EC intervenes halfway through the campaign period to hold meetings with presidential candidates, such were the events of the last elections. He had stood the taste of time as he says knowledge about what he was charged with as his immediate deliverable stood in full glare before him.
“We all did not want our friends to depart at that time, but the truth was at hand and we had to accept it,” Mulekwah says continuing, “Now I called all the staff members into a short meeting and told them that the honors are on us to deliver an election to Ugandans or live lamenting about those who had gone. I told them that the country was looking on us and we had to do what we were meant to.”
With a dented image of the commission before him, Mulekwah and Justice Byabakama had to wade through floods of public scrutiny, ambiguity on the way forward, and restoration of sanity in the election that had rather turned chaotic.
“It is a perception out there about the commission because delivering an election is a whole collective responsibility. Without the media, political parties, and other players, we can’t manage the work. When a candidate loses an election, the blame is on us and yet when you look at the work of the commission, we are just referees in the game,” he says.
“It is like a man who blames the midwife after his wife delivers a girl child and not a boy. We all know from our biology that the man determines the sex of the child they give birth to, isn’t it?” Mulekwah asks searchingly.
“I am pleased to inform you that during the 73rd commission meeting held on October 12, 2021, under Min.CM 259/The Commission approved that you be appointed to the post of secretary of the electoral commission, in part read the October 12, 2021 letter addressed to Leonard Russell Jacques Mulekwah.
Justice Byabakama says this was the right decision because Mr. Mulekwah had proved himself beyond reasonable doubt that he could handle the office which he had held for more than 15 months, although the constitution indicates that one is meant to hold an acting position only for six months.
“Mr. Mulekwah had the hardest job interview because he was tested on the job. It would only be madness for us to think twice about appointing him into the office because we saw what he had done in that very hard election,” Byabakama says.
He adds that there was no time to confirm Mulekwah in the middle of an election which is why the appointing authorities had not kept the law.
What awaits Mulekwah
Although Justice Byabakama says that Mulekwah’s task at the time was to make sure the upcoming by-elections at the local government levels are scheduled whose program is already up and ruining and scheduled for this December, the main threshold for him will be delivering the Local Council one and Local Council two elections of 2023.
This will be the second election at the local council organised under President Museveni’s 35 years at the helm of the country after 2018 and 2001 after the name had changed from Resistance Councils in the 1990s.
Immediately after capturing power in 1986, President Museveni introduced the local council system as a mobilisation strategy at the village level. This would replace the “mayumba kumi”, loosely translated as a 10-house unit cell system that was used to enforce security and defense at the local level which had been introduced in 1991.
The first election of the LC system was organised by the NRM secretariat but after the promulgation of the constitution which instituted a permanent electoral commission, the voting of LC became a mandate of the EC.
After the government endorsed the Local Government Amendment Bill 2014, which changed the system of voting from secret ballots to lining up in public behind candidates of choice.
At least 70,626 villages will go to polls for their leaders at that level who will later form a village committee of 10 members who will later participate in the LC2 election in the 10,595 across the country.
In 2018 EC conducted LC elections where the majority ruling party, National Resistance Movement (NRM), fielded candidates at lower administrative units, winning over 90 percent of village and parish leadership positions.
Justice Byabakama says, “There are many elections but the LC elections are the most important of all. You can see that this year is already done and by next year, the Commission has to begin the preparations for the election to take place in 2023 and that is a major task.”
Until 1995 when general elections were organized by an interim committee which was chaired by Besweri Akabway following the promulgation of the constitution, the 1980 elections had been disputed on many grounds with allegations of vote-rigging and ballot staffing among other fraudulent acts.
Article 61 of the constitution of Uganda establishes the EC core mandates: to organize, supervise and conduct regular, free, and fair elections.
Both Mulekwah and Justice Byabakama believe that the current commission has so far delivered on the mandate but the secretary to the commission had a big mandate of changing the perception of the public.
“I know what is ahead of me is not small because of many contentions including the way commissioners in EC are appointed which places a rhetoric that we could bend towards the President who is also a candidate in an election but out know that the parliament approves the appointments and if they don’t, it won’t happen,” he says.
So far the Commission according to records has had only three secretaries; Mr. Andrew Muwonge as the first Secretary, followed by Mr Rwakoojo and now Mulekwah.
What Mulekwah brings to the Commission…
Byabakama says he didn’t think twice before bringing on Mulekwah whom he thinks is one of the longest-serving and experienced commissioners whom he describes as ‘colleagual’ and always seeking advice from the seniors.
“He is rich with knowledge, and his qualifications as a planner give us an edge towards achieving our mandate since he is also the accounting officer. Already I can feel the positive energy on the team and we are moving forward smoothly with new invasions on the team,” he says.
Since his appointment in July last 2020, staff members at the commission who did not want to be named in this story because they are not allowed to speak say he has transformed many things and operations.
One of them says, “There is a lot of vigor in voter education and disseminating information to the public. There is no bureaucracy, especially for upcountry people on who should speak and who shouldn’t. Everyone knows when they should for instance be hosted on radio, this wasn’t the case before.”
Mulekwah says in his one year as acting secretary which came in the middle of an election, he managed to ensure that all materials are delivered and retrieved from polling stations by vehicles to avoid some people who grab the ballot boxes and papers as they are being transported to the different tally centers by boda bodas.
Mulekwah’s life
The father of three daughters and a son says he reminisces the time when NRA toppled Idi Amin’s government in 1979 while the term in school was still ongoing at Nyakasura School when they were kept at school for more than three weeks into the holidays. He says most of the people at home thought he had been killed in the attack on the district by rebels.
“There was no communication during those days save for the post office letters. When we were cut off from school, my parents and neighbors organized a funeral service and mourned for me. When the situation had stabilized, the school released us to come back home but when I disembarked from the bus, I could notice strange faces looking at me,” he narrates.
“When I turned to look at them, they all ran away but I could not tell why they were running away from me until I reached home and my mother came running and gave me a warm hug. She told me that everyone knew that I had died and that people knew that I was a ghost,” he adds.
He grew up with his parents, both primary school teachers who educated him and his other five siblings.
Working experience at EC
- 1988-1990 District Taxation Officer: Mbale and Mukono Districts
- 1990-1992- Assitant District Treasurer Mukono District
- 1992 -1995 Pallisa District population officer
- 1996- 1999 – Pallisa District Planner, Constituency assembly as documentation officer in Pallisa District under the interim electoral commission chaired by Akabway
- 1999-2002 – Permanent Electoral Commission District Registrar in Pallisa. Alhaji Aziz Kalungi Kasujja transferred to headquarters, election officer as head of the election manager, matters pertaining to the far Eastern region
- 2004 –Acting Deputy Head Elections Management Department
- 2004-2005 -Head voter Education Department
- 2007-2020 –Director Operations EC
- July 2020-September 2021 Ag. Secretary to the commission
- October 2021 -Appointed Secretary
Academic Journey
- M.A. (Population Studies), 1989/90.
At Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana. - B. Statistics (Hons), 1984 – 87 At Institute Of Statistics & Applied Economics, Makerere University.
- Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education, 1981 – 1983, at Kampala High School.
- Uganda Certificate of Education, 1977 – 1980 at Nyakasura School.
