A report released in Kampala yesterday predicts that campaign spending will reach unprecedented levels in 2021.
The 2019 report by Alliance for Finance Monitoring and Democratic Governance Facility interrogates the impact of campaign spending on electoral participants.
The report confirms that People power and ruling part NRM are to Spend billions on billboards, radio commercials and other advertising media.
People power inclined Members of Parliaments coming in 2021, each is believed to inject 500 million for campaigns, City mayors to spend 700 Million and Councillors to spend 300 Million.
According to Analysts, Bobi wine is believed to be planning to spend 15 Billons alone on campaigns to advertise on Facebook where he has a large support, Radios and Television stations
The report further indicates that unregulated campaign spending will have a devastating effect on electoral participants, more especially those who lose elections.
According to the report, many former aspirants ended in civil prisons after failing to pay debts, many have lost property, degenerated to poverty or lost their mental sanity.
The report quotes testimonies of victims of the costs of unregulated campaign spending. Simon Muyanga Lutaaya, a journalist who lost to NRM candidate Kenneth Lubogo in the Bulamogi parliamentary seat in 2016, suffered court costs after he lost the court challenge at Jinja High Court and also at the Court of Appeal. It is said that he is still servicing an sh51m debt.
The former Kyadondo East MP, Apollo Kantinti was in July this year sent to Luzira Prison after he failed to pay the Sh108m court costs to Mike Ssebalu who challenged his election in court and debt of sh300m he allegedly borrowed from a bank for campaigns.
The report recommends that an effective law regulate campaign spending be enacted expeditiously, to deal with the problem.
Henry Muguzi, the executive director of ACFIM, told MPs, leaders of political parties and members of the civil society who attended the report launch at a hotel in Kampala that the cost of financing election campaigns has risen since Uganda returned to multi-party political dispensation.
