Incumbent legislators’ seats are threatened after over 1000 people picked forms to challenge them for parliamentary seats of constituencies. The women MP positions have over 200 challengers.
In total, there are 1,550 people including incumbent MPs who have picked forms to contest for direct constituencies while for district women MP seats, there are 410 contestants including incumbents.
The most threatened constituency legislators, according to Tanga Odoi, are those from western Uganda, followed by those from Eastern, Central, North and Karamoja where only 25 people want MP seats and 19 want women MP seats.
As for district women MPs, those most affected are from eastern Uganda according to Tanga, followed by those from western, northern and lastly central. The district chairpersons have also not been spared because a total of 283 people have picked forms to contest for LC5 chairperson seats.
Coming to NRM leadership seats, the most threatened regional national vice chairperson is that of northern region Sam Engola followed by Matayo Kyaligonza [west]. Odoi said that upon closure of the picking of forms, the aspirants are supposed to return them together with their certified academic papers between August 11-20th.
He adds that thereafter, the NRM EC is going to embark on a lengthy exercise to scrutinize academic papers for the contestants before going ahead to nominate anyone to contest in the NRM primaries for the posts they want.