Just a few hours after former presidential candidate Dr Abed Bwanika announced to public that the electoral commission had allowed him to collect 1.5m signatures supporting a referendum on age limit, FDC has come out to rubbish the move.
According to the deputy spokesperson of FDC, Paul Mwiru, a referendum can not work where general elections have failed.
“We can’t support or engage in an election like this because it will be organised by Museveni and even the same person who will announce the results. We are just from an election which we are saying was stolen by Museveni. We can’t support this, ” Mwiru said.
He, however, said that they will rather engage Bwanika on the issue and convince him to join them on fighting age limit removal because a referendum is unreliable.
Mwiru added that Bwanika should know he is playing in the enemy’s trap by agitating for a referendum on age limit.
However, the electoral commission spokesperson Jotham Taremwa, as though aware of Mwiru’s fears, said that collecting and verifying these signatures is also not an easy task.
“In accordance with the law, the electoral commission has to scrutinize the signatures before accepting them as authentic. We shall even pin the lists of these names in villages asking signatories whether they are the ones who signed and also ask whether they did it willingly,” Taremwa promised.