“Anybody who plans to run away with the ballot box in case it is there please don’t try, if it me in that polling station and I have a gun, I will shoot you” ASP Okema warns.
Police in Aswa region have warned the public of tempering with the ballot
papers and voting materials saying it will amount to shooting and killing.
The warning comes barely hours as the country to the presidential and parliamentary elections tomorrow, Thursday.
Addressing Journalists from Northern Uganda Media Club, ASP Jimmy Patrick Okema, the Aswa River Region Police Public
Relations Officer, says he will not hesitate to shoot any body who tampers with a ballot box.
Okema revealed that there will be maximum deployment of the
forces on the polling day should to people confidence and assurance of peaceful elections but not to cause fear and panic.
He has asked the locals to cooperate with the armed forces
and urged them to refrain from going into the polling stations while drunk.
“Anybody who plans to run away with the ballot box in case
it is there please don’t try, if it me in that polling station and I have a gun,
I will shoot you” Okema warns.
Okema explained that vandalizing, running with or destroying the
voting material amounts to treason.
Cue in……//"In any case......" Cue out…."A gun I just......." //
In 2016 elections, a number of ballot papers were reportedly damaged in Aruu County by the incumbent MP Samuel Odonga Otto citing the election malpractices.
The upcoming election is an unprecedented one characterized
by the new normal of COVID-19 pandemic where candidates were barred from
addressing rallies to curtail the spread of the infections.
The country had witnessed violence prior to the poling day
mainly in the Central Region with the November incident that claimed the lives of
more than 54 Ugandans with dozen others injured.
Simon Wokorach
Freelancer