By Mulengera Reporters
On Friday at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala where media owners and broadcasters from the metropolitan area converged for the UCC-organized stakeholders engagement meeting, the Electoral Commission chief publicist Julius Mucunguzi furiously responded to a casual comment and observation that was made by National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Chairman Dr. Innocent Nahabwe.
Renowned for his sense of humour and for always cracking jokes, Dr. Nahabwe (speaking on behalf of fellow broadcasters) had declared the ongoing 2026 general elections campaign “the most boring” in his entire adult life. His justification was that people were not “being beaten” for his Galaxy Media and other news outlets to get exciting news to report to their curious audiences.
Even when Dr. Nahabwe was just joking and quickly proceeded to contextualize his joke by imploring chief police publicist Kituuma Rusoke and Gen Felix Kulayigye to prevail on their officers and men to avoid overzealousness so that the campaigning period remains this peaceful and chaos-free for the remaining roughly 3 months, Mucunguzi quickly got irritated and rebuked him for it.
Mucunguzi said it was unacceptable for a big person like the NAB Chairman to joke about such-of all things. Mucunguzi made it clear that is how it should be and its the status quo which his employer, the EC is determined to work towards maintaining and sustaining in place all through the entire election cycle. Mucunguzi implored Nahabwe (who casually regretted the fact there are no nice pictures and videos of chaos for his news crew members to capture and trend on social media platforms like Tik Tok, Twitter etc) to influence all his NAB members to deliberately broadcast news items that are aimed at promoting peace through the campaigning and voting period.
“There is generally no news for us so and we gratefully don’t have to invest up to Shs7m buying basic protective gear for our journalists covering the elections. My plea to Afande Kituuma Rusoke is that please let’s keep it that way and demonstrate that it’s possible to have chaos-free elections. Keep the errant officers away from election policing. Don’t beat up people so that we end this without having any of those trending tweets,” Dr. Nahabwe said prompting Mucunguzi to respond with: “Imagine that framing by the media! Why buy all that protective gear and over prepare as if you are sending those young men and women to war?”
Mucunguzi said the media has a lot of power and influence which Nahabwe should lead his NAB members to use to make Ugandans aware and accept the fact that elections is a civil exercise which doesn’t warrant or require violent actions.
Kituuma agreed and implored broadcasters to work towards de-escalation as opposed to framing the situation towards violence simply because they want to remove ‘boredom’ and get trending images and videos for their platforms and news outlets.
Kulayigye said no journalist should crave for violent exchanges during campaigns and election time because that is how Sudan, DRC or Somalia-like chaos begin and, in the end, even journalism can’t be practiced. Kituuma said police men and officers actually suffer more injury and detriment in case violence crops up-except that the Uganda Police Force never prides itself in publishing photos and statistics highlighting how many of their afandes have fractured their legs or hands and have had to be hospitalized because chaos-inflicted injuries.
Kituuma added that much of what the public ends up calling police brutality is actually a result of police men and officers trying to defend themselves against very violent protestors and rioters. He recalled himself personally getting his head badly bruised and made to profusely bleed upon being stoned and beaten up by rioters during 2009 violent protests in Entebbe areas. Kituuma Rusoke was those days deployed under Mobile Police Patrol Unit (MPPU).
Julius Mucunguzi insisted that all media reporting should be aimed at helping political actors and their respective supporters to move towards finding common ground as opposed to inciting tensions simply because they want to get selling stories in order to eliminate the ‘boredom’ Dr. Nahabwe joked about. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
