Oulanyah made the remarks while appearing on NBS TV’s Morning Breeze programme on Monday.
The Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah believes that there will be fewer petitions against the current presidential outcomes because they were organized on merit.
Oulanyah made the remarks while appearing on NBS TV’s Morning Breeze programme on Monday.
He said that most of the people who have lost in the just concluded presidential elections lack enough valid evidence to stand in court and challenge Museveni’s victory.
Oulanyah justified that many will be quick to say that the EC used the existence of the coronavirus to deny those in the opposition the chance of campaigning but President Museveni too was very obedient to all the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) in place.
”I think this time we will have fewer petitions. You must prove that whatever happened affected your win. Most of them (people who have lost) cannot stand in court,” Oulanyah said.
”They will want to say the SOPs were designed to favour our candidate. I can tell you, President Museveni became the implementer of SOPs. He did not bend any rules,” he added.
Meanwhile, this comes at a time when two opposition presidential candidates including NUP’s Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu alias Bobi Wine and FDC’s Patrick Oboi Amuriat have since come out to cite that the ruling NRM party connived with the EC to rig the elections.
Kyagulanyi in particular, who is currently still under house arrest continues to threaten that he has got a plan B in response to the election outcomes.
He says that he will also appeal to both local and international courts of law to seek justice.
On this, the Deputy Speaker said that they expected the elections to be violent but, thanked Ugandans for displaying maturity. He said that in past the country has experienced violence and it is not a direction they would love to see again.
”We expected the 2021 elections would be very violent. It was so built up, the talk of plan B and so on. People have deserted the city. I salute Ugandans for the maturity they have exercised. We have seen violence before that we don’t want to remember,” Oulanyah noted pinpointing that the opposition was not strong enough to put Museveni to test.
Oulanyah who is the MP-elect for Omoro district explained that most of the opposition candidates including Museveni’s strongest opponent Kyagulanyi did not have an idea of why they wanted to rule the country but based their manifestos on the fact that the incumbent (Museveni) had overstayed in power.
”Bobi Wine is not a person but an idea. Most of the intellectuals bought into the idea that President Museveni had overstayed in power. They didn’t have the right candidate to carry the idea. If they had a Ruto, the president would have had a challenge,” Oulanyah explained.
If you look at this election, what do you see? I see that a lot of people resorted to sectarianism and tribal politics. I remember the reference to religion to build support before the elections.
That is a retraction from what the NRM has achieved. Where people ran out of options to challenge the NRM, they resort to politics of identity. ”On the internet shut down, he said that it only affected the people who are used to it and not the ordinary people in the villages.”
”I sympathise with the young people whose businesses were affected. Each time I go to my village, I don’t have internet, I’m also glad that others have experienced what I go through. The internet blackout only affects the people who live by it, the ordinary people are not affected,” he said.
