76 per cent want term limits reinstated
A recent survey has indicated that President Yoweri Museveni is leading in the presidential race for the 2016 elections.
The 62-page survey dubbed ‘Measuring the national political temperature ahead of the 2016 elections’ has placed Museveni ahead of the presidential pack with 54 per cent, followed by Colonel Dr Kizza Besigye with 19 per cent, while former Prime Minister and National Resistance Movement (NRM) Secretary General John Patrick Amama Mbabazi is in third position with 12 per cent.
The survey carried out by Research World International (RWI), fielded 2320 randomly-selected respondents, both male and female aged between 17 and 24, from 120 parishes of 72 sub counties in 48 districts across Uganda.
According to the survey, carried out between July 11 and 26, over 50 per cent of the respondents of the 1221 young women and 1099 young men were unemployed, 98 per cent had registered for the national IDs, while 76 per cent said they wanted the term limits reinstated.
According to the survey, 45 per cent of the respondents do not trust the Electoral Commission to hold credible elections, while 49 per cent said they don’t trust the Uganda Police.
The respondents singled out poverty, corruption, unemployment, roads and the education systems as the leading constraints, with the majority saying government was not doing enough to combat corruption.
Asked about the candidates they knew, 100 said they know Museveni; 96 per cent know Dr Besigye; 83 per cent know Amama Mbabazi; 79 per cent know Olara Otunnu; 77 per cent know Norbert Mao; 76 per cent know Mugisha Muntu, while the least known candidate was Professor Venasius Baryamureeba with 25 per cent. Seventy four per cent of the respondents said they knew about Professor Gilbert Bukenya, while 46 per cent said they knew about Jimmy Akena.
Also, 82 per cent of 1408 respondents interviewed on party preference said they would vote for the NRM, while 13 per cent said they would vote for the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).
Meanwhile, of 1155 respondents, 38 per cent said they would like the NRM to have a new leader. The respondents also said that in the absence of Museveni on the ballot paper as NRM flag bearer, 39 per cent would vote for Amama Mbabazi; 18 per cent would vote for Janet Kataha Museveni; 11 per cent would vote for Rebecca Kadaga, while 8 per cent said they would vote for Ruhakana Rugunda and Muhoozi Kainerugaba. Also, 8 per cent are undecided, while 5 per cent said they would vote for Museveni’s brother General Salim Saleh (Caleb Akandwanaho).
According to the survey, 94 per cent of the respondents said they intend to vote in the 2016 elections, while those who don’t want to vote said that they doubted the credibility of the elections; were not interested in politics; didn’t know their polling stations; were tired of the same contestants, while others lack national IDs.
Also, a majority of those interviewed in the western and northern regions said they received bribes in the 2011 elections, with 59 per cent of those bribed saying they voted for the very candidates who gave out the bribes.
The survey was sponsored by NTV, Uganda Governance Monitoring Platform and the Great Lakes Institute of Strategic Studies (GLISS).
It is important to note that Gallup polls in Uganda are usually controversial, with ‘disadvantaged’ candidates claiming the pollsters are biased.
In one such survey last year, a leading media house came under severe attack by some politicians and civil society activists after it published results indicating that President Museveni was the leading contender for the 2016 elections.
This time round, there are also reports that the RWI survey is being criticized and contested by those it did not rate favourably, despite prominent opposition figures Dr Patrick Wakida and Godber Tumushabe reportedly featuring in the survey’s production.
