ABSTRACT
The soldiers justified their action with a statement which was read, in Lugbara, over Radio Uganda on the day of the coup. Of the eighteen reasons offered for their intrusion into the political arena, number seven dealt with the electoral process. National elections in Uganda, like in much of Africa, have been most conspicuous by their absence. Though two such elections were held in the country’s preindependence period, no national elections have been conducted during Uganda’s existence as an independent state. Buganda, struggling to maintain its privileged status, hoped that new, more favorable options might emerge from this investigation and thus argued that the elections should not be held until the Munster Commission published its report. The ideological dormancy of Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) had largely resulted from electoral needs, and such dormancy exacerbated problems of organization and mobilization. The UPC had never been a monolithic organization and that fact was not changed by the new Constitution.
