The High Court in Mubende has nullified the election of National Resistance Movement (NRM) candidate Dedan Mubangizi as Member of Parliament for Buwekula South Constituency after finding that serious irregularities in the handling of ballot papers and other electoral materials undermined the credibility of a recount that handed him victory.
Acting Judge Mary Babirye ordered the Electoral Commission to organise a fresh election, declaring the parliamentary seat vacant following a petition filed by independent candidate Fred Tumwesigye, who had initially been declared the winner of the January 15, 2026 general elections.
In her judgment delivered on November 13, 2026, Justice Babirye found that the recount conducted in January, which reversed the initial results in favour of Mubangizi, was affected by missing ballot papers, absent declaration of results forms, discrepancies in vote totals and failures to properly account for electoral materials.
The dispute arose after Mubende District Returning Officer Ferdinand Tumwesigye Mulekezi initially declared Tumwesigye the winner with 8,804 votes against Mubangizi’s 7,998, giving the independent candidate an 806-vote lead.
National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Edward Ssempiira finished third with 1,915 votes.
Mubangizi subsequently challenged the results and obtained an order for a recount through the Mubende Chief Magistrate’s Court.
The recount, conducted on January 27 and 28, 2026, overturned the original outcome, with Mubangizi declared the winner after securing 7,908 votes against Tumwesigye’s 7,504, giving the NRM candidate a 404-vote advantage.
Ssempiira’s tally also changed to 1,878 votes.
Tumwesigye, dissatisfied with the recount outcome, returned to court, arguing that the process was affected by irregularities and that the electoral materials could not be properly accounted for.
Justice Babirye’s examination of the original election return and the recount certificate revealed a substantial difference in the number of votes recorded before and after the exercise.
The original declaration showed 18,717 valid votes, but the recount certificate recorded only 17,291, representing a disappearance of 1,426 valid votes.
The number of invalid ballots also dropped from 379 in the original return to 190 during the recount.
The judge observed that the reduction was particularly significant for Tumwesigye, whose tally fell by 1,300 votes, compared with 90 votes lost by Mubangizi and 36 by Ssempiira.
This meant that more than 91 per cent of the missing valid votes came from the initial winner’s tally, a change that reversed the outcome of the election.
In her assessment, Justice Babirye questioned the failure by the electoral officials to provide a convincing reconciliation of the figures and establish how the missing votes had been accounted for.
“The unexplained loss from the Petitioner’s recorded total exceeded the original margin,” the judge observed.
She further found that the evidence presented by the Returning Officer and the general explanation that the recount had corrected errors did not satisfactorily account for the changes in the candidates’ respective tallies.
The court also examined the condition and custody of electoral materials, including ballot papers, ballot boxes, declaration of results forms and the records used during the recount.
At Namalewe Life Centre Compound polling station in Kyabaduuma, the court was presented with evidence concerning a ballot box that contained 300 unused ballot papers and seven used booklets but had no cast ballots or declaration of results form.
The judge considered the absence of essential electoral records and the failure to provide a satisfactory account of the materials as serious shortcomings that undermined confidence in the recount.
The court found that the Electoral Commission and the Returning Officer had not demonstrated that the materials used to arrive at the recount results could be reliably authenticated.
