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[Monitor] The Electoral Commission (EC) was justified to suspend election campaign meetings in 12 districts, court has ruled.
Many people have been killed since clashes began on Monday. Scores too had been killed in the run up to the vote as protestors marched against Conde's bid for a third term.
[Shabelle] A CIA officer died during a raid in Somalia last month targeting a key extremist thought to be responsible for an attack that killed an American soldier in Kenya last year, local intelligence officials have told the Guardian.
Ugandans are engaged in heated debates over the merits, possibilities and effectiveness of participating in what is being popularly referred to as a ‘scientific election’.
The East African country is scheduled to hold presidential, parliamentary and local government elections next year.
The electoral commission last week told the nation to prepare for an unusual election where campaigning will be done digitally, as the destabilizing effects of the coronavirus continue.
Justifying scientific elections
Uganda which currently has over 700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus has been slowly easing restrictions and emphasizing measures of social distancing for all activities in the country.
The commission says it is bound by Article 61 (2) of Uganda’s constitution which tasks it to organize elections within 120 days before the expiry of the term of president, parliament or local government.
In conducting a scientific election, the commission hopes to exercise its duty to facilitate Ugandans’ right to choose their leaders in a healthy and safe environment.
How it will be conducted
Aspirants at all levels will only be able to conduct campaigns electronically via television, radio and social media, since open-air public rallies have been banned.
“This is because electoral activities involve public gatherings and hence pose high COVID-19 risk of person-to-person and object-to-person transmissions,” the commission explained in a statement.
The three months of a lockdown imposed since March across the country also means that some activities will have to be accomplished in a much shorter time.
With hardly six months to the elections scheduled to be held between January and February next year, political parties are yet to nominate flag-bearers for the different offices that will be contested.
Voting itself is to be conducted normally, with president Yoweri Museveni telling the nation on Monday that government can effectively ensure social distancing and other precautionary measures at polling stations.
“… the gathering for the elections themselves, can be safely managed with hand-washing, social-distancing or leaving gaps of the necessary metres between voters in line,” Museveni said.
“This would remove the uncertainty that would be created by the postponement of the elections but also ensure that elections are held safely. I call upon Ugandans to support this option.”
Ugandans react
Key stakeholders in the electoral process including leaders of political parties and the voters themselves have shared mixed reactions to the electoral commission’s proposal.
While the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) has welcomed the proposal and says it will adjust its programme accordingly, many in the opposition say the commission is playing into the hands of incumbent Museveni and other powerful NRM politicians.
The opposition politicians accuse the electoral commission of not consulting them as it drafted the revised election roadmap. According to the popular legislator and presidential hopef
The first Black Air Force Chief of Staff, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, was sworn into office by Vice President Mike Pence late Tuesday afternoon
Malawi's electoral commission appealed for \"peace and calm\" on Wednesday as it tallied ballots following a historic poll to re-elect a president after Peter Mutharika's victory was overturned.
Voters in Malawi went to the polls on Tuesday for the second time in just over a year after the Constitutional Court dramatically ruled that last year's polls were fraught with \"grave and widespread\" irregularities.
The cancellation of Mutharika's victory was historic as it made Malawi just the second country south of the Sahara to have presidential poll results set aside, after Kenya in 2017.
The chairperson of the Malawi Electoral Commission, Chifundo Kachale, said votes from 5 002 polling stations were being tallied on Wednesday.
Mutharika has accused the opposition of inciting violence following isolated incidents which the police and electoral commission said had not affected the election.
[Capital FM] Nairobi -- The late former Chief Justice Evan Gicheru was on Thursday eulogized as a great leader who played a pivotal role in mentoring young judicial officers and shaping the Judiciary's path to independence.
The Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir at the start of yesterday’s session of the budget debate announced that 14 employees of Parliament Office have tested positive for COVID-19.
The article Fourteen Parliament Office staff test positive for COVID appeared first on Stabroek News.
Malawi's electoral commission has appealed for peace and calm as it tallied ballots following a historic poll to re-elect a president after Peter Mutharika's victory was overturned.
[African Arguments] I was arrested and beaten last week for daring to contest the presidential election. This is not a fair fight, but I have no option but to be strong.
[Monitor] Ruhinda South MP Donozio Mugabe Kahonda, has withdrawn the lawsuit in which he was seeking to block the Electoral Commission (EC) from scrutinising his nomination.
Agathon Rwasa, Burundi's opposition leader and deputy speaker of Parliament has filed a petition at the country's constitutional court disputing the win of the ruling CNDD-FDD party's Evariste Ndayishimiye.
Mr Ndayishimiye won the May 20 presidential election with 68 per cent of the vote against Mr Rwasa's 24 per cent.
\"If the constitutional court rules in their favour I will move to the African Court because all the results that were announced by the electoral commission were wrong,\" said Mr Rwasa.
The country's Catholic Church deployed 2,716 observers countrywide, and has also expressed misgivings on the election process and its outcome.
However the chairman of the Independent Electoral Commission, Pierre Claver Kazihise, said that members of the Catholic church observer mission weren't well educated and informed about the electoral process.
[Monitor] The newly revised roadmap for 2021 General Election that authorised virtual campaigning has been challenged in the High Court for violating various fundamental constitutional rights and freedom.
\tPORT AU PRINCE, Haiti, Jul 6, CMC – The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) is expressing concern at the “increase in violence and barbaric acts perpetrated in the neighbourhoods of the metropolitan area of Port-au-...
The by-elections for Kahawa Wendani ward in Kiambu county, Dabaso ward in Kilifi county, Kisumu North ward in Kisumu county, Wundanyi Mbale ward in Taita Taveta county and Msambweni constituency in Kilifi county were postponed after the government imposed restrictions on gatherings in measures to combat the spread of COVID-19.
Chebukati noted the electoral commission was working on a program which will see the elections conducted once the current COVID-19 containment measures including the dusk-to-dawn curfew and cessation of movement in five counties are scaled down.
Chebukati said IEBC will liaise with the Ministry of Health to identify best ways to conduct the elections in a COVID-19 environment which minimizes human to human contact.
\"When curfew and other activities are scaled down, we shall embark on this program and set new dates for this by-elections,\" Chebukati added.
Dabaso Ward MCA Emmanuel Changawa's lost his seat after the Court of Appeal nullified his election in November 2019 while in Kisumu, Elisha Araro resigned his seat as Kisumu North MCA to vie for County Assembly Speaker.
Today, Governor Gretchen Whitmer proposed additional police reform policies to help strengthen police-community relations and ensure that all Michiganders are treated with dignity and respect under the law. The four-pronged plan, which was developed in partnership with community leaders and law enforcement organizations, will make significant reforms in policy, personnel, participation and community engagement, and Continued
The post Governor Whitmer Proposes Additional Police Reforms appeared first on The Michigan Chronicle.
[Nation] President Uhuru Kenyatta's ex-constitutional advisor, Abdikadir Mohamed, has become the latest hopeful in the already crowded race to replace impeached Nairobi governor Mike Sonko.
\tUganda which currently has over 700 confirmed cases of the coronavirus has been slowly easing restrictions and emphasizing measures of social distancing for all activities in the country.
The opposition politicians accuse the electoral commission of not consulting them as it drafted the revised election roadmap.
Malawi's opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera won last week's presidential election re-run with 58.57 per cent of the vote, the electoral commission said Saturday.
And on Saturday, electoral commission chairman Chifundo Kachale told journalists: \"The commission declares that Lazarus Chakwera, having attained 58.57 percent of the vote, has been duly elected as the president of Malawi.\"
In February, Malawi's top court found the first election had been marred by widespread irregularities, including the use of correction fluid to tamper with result sheets.
The landmark ruling made Malawi just the second African country south of the Sahara to have presidential poll results set aside, after Kenya in 2017.
The outgoing president's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had on Friday called on Malawi's Electoral Commission (MEC) to annul the results of the second vote and declare a third election.
The electoral commission, INEC, has approved direct primary for the All Progressives Congress (APC) to select its candidate for the September 19 governorship election in Edo State.
The APC headquarters had approved direct primary while the Edo chapter of the party wanted indirect primary.
Festus Okoye, the INEC spokesperson, appealed to the various political parties to conduct their primaries in full compliance with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution and Electoral Act 2010 law.
\"In accordance with Sections 85 and 87 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended), 15 out of the 18 registered Political Parties have notified the Commission of their intention to conduct primaries for the purpose of nominating candidates for the Edo State Governorship election slated for 19 September 2020.
\"The Commission appeals to the various Political Parties to conduct their primaries in full compliance with the provisions of the 1999 Constitution and Electoral Act 2010 (as amended), Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of Political Party Primaries (2018) and the INEC Police COVID-19 Pandemic of 21\" May 2020.
March 1, 1880, Decided; OCTOBER, 1879 Term
MR. JUSTICE STRONG delivered the opinion of the court.
The plaintiff in error, a colored man, was indicted for murder in the Circuit Court of Ohio County, in West Virginia, on the 20th of October, 1874, and upon trial was convicted and sentenced. The record was then removed to the Supreme Court of the State, and there the judgment of the Circuit Court was affirmed. The present case is a writ of error to that court, and it is now, in substance, averred that at the trial in the State court the defendant (now plaintiff in error) was denied rights to which he was entitled under the Constitution and laws of the United States.
In the Circuit Court of the State, before the trial of the indictment was commenced, the defendant presented his petition, verified by his oath, praying for a removal of the cause into the Circuit Court of the United States, assigning, as ground for the removal, that by virtue of the laws of the State of West Virginia no colored man was eligible to be a member of the grand jury or to serve on a petit jury in the State; that white men are so eligible, and that by reason of his being a colored man and having been a slave, he had reason to believe, and did believe, he could not have the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings in the State of West Virginia for the security of his person as is enjoyed by white citizens, and that he had less chance of enforcing in the courts of the State his rights on the prosecution, as a citizen of the United States, and that the probabilities of a denial of them to him as such citizen on every trial which might take place on the indictment in the courts of the State were much more enhanced than if he was a white man. This petition was denied by the State court, and the cause was forced to trial.
Motions to quash the venire, because the law under which it was issued was unconstitutional, null, and void, and successive motions to challenge the array of the panel, for a new trial, and in arrest of judgment
The Electoral Commission now has to make arrangements to include them on the voters’ register to participate in next year’s general election.
The ruling is a result of a petition filed in 2018 by lawyer Stephen Kalali seeking declarations and orders that prisoners and Ugandans in the diaspora have a fundamental and absolute right to be registered as voters.
Mr Kalali argued that their omission and exclusion from voting amounts to segregation and discrimination, demanding that all prisons in Uganda be declared registration and polling centres ahead of the 2021 election.
She added that prisoners were allowed to vote in countries like South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Zambia, which subscribe to several international human rights instruments to which Uganda is signatory
The ruling is bound to impact the Electoral Commission’s preparations for elections due to be held between January 8, 2021 and February 10, 2021.
Commission spokesperson Jonathan Taremwa said they were yet to receive the ruling and promised to study it and take a decision.
The executive has moved its hand to a very unfamiliar and unexpected place to undermine Judiciary financial independence.
Two hundred and thirty-one thousand men and 10,000 women served in the Coast Guardduring World War II. Of these, 1,918 gave their lives in service, and Charles Walter David Jr. was one of them. Born in 1917 and lived in New York, David joined the United States Coast Guard at a time the service was...
The post Coast Guard hero Charles W. David Jr rescued 93 crew members in icy water, and then died appeared first on Face2Face Africa.
Malawi's governing party has called for a third presidential election, citing irregularities and intimidation in this week's re-run vote as unofficial tallies show incumbent President Peter Mutharika losing to the opposition leader.
Voters in the southern African country went to the polls on Tuesday for the second time in 13 months after the Constitutional Court scrapped the initial May 2019 presidential election over mass fraud.
The governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) called Friday on the electoral commission to annul the results collated so far of the second vote and declare a third poll.
DPP administrative secretary Francis Mphepo said in a statement: \"We wish to highlight several incidents that may potentially affect the integrity and credibility of the presidential election results.\"
In February, Malawi's top court found the election was marred by widespread irregularities, including the use of correction fluid to tamper with result sheets.
The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) is expressing concern at the “increase in violence and barbaric acts perpetrated in the neighborhoods of the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince”.
Parliament is to be dissolved on Thursday as the country goes into a general election.\tPrime Minister Andrew Holness yesterday announced that Jamaicans will go to the polls on Thursday, September 3.\tREAD: Holness seeks second mandate...
[Shabelle] Details are emerging of a series of attacks waged in eight districts and a neighborhood in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Thursday night.
