$50 million needed to finance election activities

The Ugandan Electoral Commission needs US $50.3 million to organise a series of election related-events including a referendum later this year to decide whether to return to multi-party politics, officials said on Saturday. "Eighty-five billion shillings ($50.3 million) [is needed] to organise a series of elections expected to take place between this year and next year," the commission's spokesman, Peter Okello Jabweli, told IRIN on Monday. "The money will help us print electoral material, carry out voter registration, conduct civic education and organize the polls themselves." The money, Jabweli added, was needed for the referendum, which is due on 30 June, to approve amendments to the 1995 Constitution, and for presidential, parliamentary and local council elections early next year. "The amount seems to be high because of the many intricate variables at play in these elections," he said, adding that this would be the first time in nearly two decades that elections would be based on multi-party politics and would take place on a single day, instead of drawing the elections out over several days. According to a political-time table drawn up by the government, the June referendum would be followed by elections for the president, legislators and district council heads between 12 February and 12 March 2006. The nomination of candidates was scheduled for December this year. The government has already presented to Parliament proposals to amend the country's constitution in order to allow for the return of a multi-party system. They have also asked for the introduction of a federal arrangement where districts would come together to form a regional government with some powers delegated by the central government. Known as the Constitution (Amendment) Bill 2005, the proposed revision would also repeal a provision in the law that limits a president to two five-year terms, thus allowing incumbent President Yoweri Museveni to seek re-election in next year's polls. The repeal of term limits, according to the constitution, could be adopted by a two-thirds majority vote of the 294-member Parliament. A return to multi-party politics, which were banned by Museveni in 1986 when he seized power in a military coup, must be approved by a majority of Ugandan voters in the national referendum. The current constitution came into force in 1995 and the first presidential election under it, which Museveni won, was held a year later. In 2001, Museveni won what would have been his second and last term, which expires in March 2006. In all, Museveni has been in power for 19 years. In the 2006 general elections, over eight million Ugandans will on the same day vote for a president, 297 members of Parliament and 56 district council heads, at 20,000 polling stations, according to the commission.