Presidential Candidate Willy Mayambala Blames Low Voter Turnout on EC

Independent Presidential Candidate, Willy Mayambala has blamed the Electoral Commission-EC for the low voter turn-out in Thursday’s election. 

Only 10,359,479 voters participated in the polls, out of the 18,103,603 voters registered voters across the country.   The figures indicate that the Thursday poll had a voter turnout of 57.22 per cent less than the 2016 election’s where the turn out stood at 62.61 per cent and 2006 when up to 69.2 per cent of all registered voters were able to participate. 

The outcome of the process shows that Yoweri Museveni, the NRM candidate polled 5,851,037 votes representing 58.64 per cent of the total votes cast, to beat his main challenger Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu who polled 3,475,298 votes which is equal to 34.83 per cent of the total votes cast.   Mayambala came last with 14,657 votes (0.15 percent). 

Although, he believes that he stood a better chance at the presidency if all registered voters had cast their ballot, Mayambala has already conceded defeat.  But he raises an issue with the low voter turn-out saying that the Electoral Commission should take a share of the blame for failing to ensure that more and more Ugandans participate in the polls. 

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Asked about his next move after the election, Mayambala says that he is to go back to his personal life a civil engineering consultant.   

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The country has a total of 34,684 polling stations and the declared results for the presidential race were from 33,427 polling stations. Votes from 1,257 polling stations across the country were not included in the presidential results. Some of the affected polling stations are Wakiso (271), Kampala (50), Mukono (81), Bunyangabu (87) and others.    But, even after the final tally, these cannot change the outcome of the process.