The electoral commission chairman Eng. Badru Kiggundu, however laughed off the statistics saying their register has the correct figures.  “In a country where people have no birth certificates, how realistic can those statistics be?” he asked “you need a population specialist to be sure of their statistics” he added.

The commission has argued before that figures given by the Uganda Bureau of statistics (UNBOS) are wrong. When they released the total number of people on the register, once again their register was much bigger than the UNBOS figures. The opposition had questioned their figures since UNBOS predicted that 7,119,800 Ugandans will be 18 and above in 2010. Eighteen is the legal age for voting in Uganda and one can only be registered if they were eighteen and above on the day they are registered.

The electoral commission on the other hand released a register with almost twice that figure at 13,954,129 and argued that since they had registered the people physically, theirs was a more realistic statistic.  The commission is accused of keeping ghosts names on the register to favour the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) of President Yoweri Museveni.  He has full control over the commission since he chooses the people at the commission.

So when Ugandans go to vote February 18, 2011 the opposition which has consistently said the electoral commission is incompetent will have a legitimate concern against the commission; a register that can’t be trusted.