Solomon Silwany, party affiliate of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) and the Member of Parliament for Bukholi Central, has rubbished allegations of vote-rigging, saying the opposition had nothing to offer the locals in Omoro.
Hon Solomon Silwany, Member of Parliament for Bukholi Central from the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, has rubbished claims of vote-rigging by the opposition, claiming that the locals rejected them because they did not have anything to offer.
NRM’s Andrew Ojok Oulanyah scooped the election to become the new Omoro-County Member of Parliament replacing his late father Jacob Oulanyah.
Oulanyah garnered 14,224 votes beating off competition from five other candidates including Simon Toolit Aketcha of the NUP party who came second on 1,633 votes.
Others including Odong Justine Obiya from the FDC party managed 529 votes, Terence Odongo on the Independent ticket scooped 532 votes, Onen Jimmy another Independent candidate got 88 votes while Kizza Oscar from the Alliance for National Transformation managed 63 votes.
The results have, however, since attracted criticism from several opposition leaders with many insisting that the results like before were scripted and rigged.
While appearing on NBS TV’s morning breeze show on Monday however, Silwany said NUP like all other opposition parties were just rejected because they had nothing to offer to the locals in Omoro.
“I was in Omoro for one week and a half. I want to thank the people of Omoro for rejecting the NUP candidate because he had nothing to offer. NRM fronted the right candidate Andrew Ojok Oulanyah who had something to offer the people,” Silwany said.
“I advise my brothers in the opposition to go back to the drawing board and prepare well. We are going for a by-election in Soroti. There is no opposition in Omoro. I went to a polling station and jokingly said, ‘NUP Oye’ people just looked on. The people in Omoro are tired of war.”
In addition, he said much as all elections can never be 100% perfect, evidence is clear NRM won the election by a mile and no one ferried voters.
“NUP is suffering from the shock of a rude loss. Elections have challenges but for the case of Omoro, we generally won. No one ferried voters. You can never have a perfect election. That is why the word is free and fair. A percentage win of 83% shows that the people of Omoro rejected NUP.”
Silwany further said there was no scuffle as reported by some opposition members. He also said no party agents were arrested and kidnapped as claimed.
Silwany revealed that most party agents were got from Kampala a reason many did not vote.
“I am not a police officer, nor do I speak for the police, so I can’t talk about the people who were arrested. Most of the NUP agents were from Kampala. They didn’t vote. At some polling stations, their party got zero.”
There was no scuffle in Omoro, even when Hon. Kyagulanyi came, and the police left him to campaign throughout the county. People are arrested in all elections because they are emotive,” Silwany added.
