By George Bukenya
The Chairman of Electoral Commission Justice Simon Mugenyi Byabakama has warned the ruling party to desist from engaging in violent acts in the forthcoming General Elections.
He made the warning while speaking to news reporters about the changes the Commission has made in the 2025-2026 general election Roadmap at the commission’s headquarters in Industrial area along Seventh Street.
“The commission will not tolerate such acts of violence marred in the NRM primaries, we strongly condemn such acts and we will work towards ensuring it they don’t occur in the general elections,’’ Justice Byabakama stated.
He announced the changes in the Roadmap for Uganda’s 2025/2026 General Elections and these affect the Local Government Councils, Parliamentary and Presidential Candidates.
Justice Byabakama said such adjustments are geared towards streamlining the nomination process and allow effective coordination of the activities because he expects many contenders who will be vying for the different positions in this electoral cycle.
The nomination of those vying for Local Government positions and special interest groups was initially scheduled to commence on 3rd September and end on 12th the same months, now the District chairpersons, LordMayers and Councillors will be nominated between 3rd and 5th September, 2025 at their respective District returning officers offices, while the Municipal and City Division Chairpersons and their councillors will be nominated between 8th to 10th September.
Chairpersons and Councillors at sub-county or towns will be nominated between 11th and 24th September at their respective sub-counties. According to Byabakama all nominations will be taking place during working days and the nomination forms for district chairpersons and City Mayors will be accessed and down loaded from online via the electoral commission website, https://uganda.electionsdataportal.org .
Councillors are required to pick their forms and guidelines from their respective Districts or Municipal Offices starting from Monday 11th, August, 2025.
The adjustments also indicate, Parliamentary candidates will be nominated between 15th -16 October, 2025 irrespective of the category and they will also download the forms from the commission’s portal starting on 11th August and are required to have at least 2/3 of signatures from their respective electoral areas.
The adjustments also affected those who will be vying for the Presidential Seat and they will start picking nomination forms physically from the Headquarters of the electoral commission on August 11th, 2025 and they are given only two weeks to solicit for signature from supporters from at least 2/3 of the districts in the country where they will get a minimum of 100 signatures from each.
Although the law streamlining the use of biometric machines in the forthcoming General Elections is not yet in place, Justice Byabakama said that they will be mandatory used to minimize on the irregularies.
He said that the law is being worked on and he is optimistic very soon it will be passed by parliament and the president will assent to it to make mandatory for the EC to use such technology.
This technology was supposed to be used in the 2021 General Elections but the machines failed and physical registers were used in the verification of voters.