Uganda's Next year Ballot papers to be printed in Britain

 BALLOT papers for the 2011 presidential, parliamentary and district chairperson’s elections will be printed in the UK, the Electoral Commission (EC) has announced. The commission chairman, Badru Kiggundu, yesterday displayed the ballot papers designed by his team. The ballots, he said, will be in the country two-and-a-half weeks to the election date of February 18. Sam Rwakojo, the commission secretary, said the ballot papers have over five security features “that cannot be duplicated by anybody.” He, however, declined to mention the features. The ballot papers bear the names of eight presidential candidates in the order of Abed Bwanika, Kiiza Besigye, Beti Kamya, Bidandi Sali, Norbert Mao, Olara Otunnu, Samuel Lubega and Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. The companies to print the papers are Smith & Ouzman Ltd of Sussex and Kalamazoo Secure Solutions Ltd of Worcestershire in the UK. Smith Ouzman will print ballots for presidential and district woman MPs at a cost of 1448m pounds, while Kalamazoo Secure Solutions will print those for MPs, district chairpersons and councillors. Lithotec Exports, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, will print ballot papers for sub-county and city division chairpersons and those for town, municipal and division councillors. For the first time, a Chinese company, AVIC International Holdings Corp, won the contract to print ballot papers for municipal chairpersons and councillors and those for sub-county division chairpersons. The commission will spend between 1.606m pounds (sh5.3b) to 2.19m pounds (sh7.3b) to print ballot papers for MPs and between 165,000 pounds (549m) and 250,000 pounds (sh832m) for district chairpersons and municipal leaders, those for municipality chairpersons and women councillors will cost between $1,469m (sh3.2b) and $1,497m (sh3.3b), while those for sub-county and municipal or division chairpersons will cost between $2,865m (sh6.3b) to $3,410m (sh7.5b). Kiggundu said campaigns would not be held on January 27 since it will be a national polling day for village youth committees and councils. The campaigns for village youth and councils start on January 23 and will end on January 25. On election petitions filed with the commission, Kiggundu said his team had resolved at least 41 cases by the end of last week.