What started as a heated and hyped election for the leadership of Musicians under their umbrella body UMA on Monday morning has turned out chaotic and close to violent.
As a result, the elections have been canceled through the Chairman Electoral body Mr Geoffrey Ekongot!
How it Started!
The elections that were scheduled to kick off at 9am were delayed by over an hour and they kicked of minutes after 10am. As earlier communicated, the results were to be displayed on the main screens on ground at the National Theatre, which acted as the main tally centre. For the first couple of minutes, the screens kept displaying the flow of votes as they came in.
At the time, the election moved on smoothly, the chaos started after the screen display system by NITA failed, Candidate egents were not able to follow up the proceedings, this was coupled with the unstable power connection that continued to make the situation worse!
BREAKING: @ekongot, Chairperson Electoral Committee UMA cancels todays UMA Election!#UMADecides2022 pic.twitter.com/LSywNQVkGx
— SPINERS.net | #Logon! (@officialspiners) June 6, 2022
As the Election continued………
15 minutes to the hour of 4pm, Mansour Semanda also known as King Saha made his way to the Theatre in company of his lawyer, Ssalongo Erias Lukwago. Upon arrival, the pair together with their agents and a few of the supporters made their way to the electoral committee Chairman’s table and aired out their grievances the main being disagreement with the entire election process. Geoffrey Ekongot, the body’s Electoral committee chairman continued to answer to some of the questions he was asked!
Final Resolution……….
At the helm of this interface between King Saha, his Lawyer Lukwago and the electoral committee body, the masses at the National Theatre went into disorganization. At this point, the elections were still ongoing but due to the unstable environment, the Chairman Electoral committee can canceled the election. In his words Geoffrey Ekongot had this to say,
“We have had overwhelming challenges with technology, however we shall announce a way forward in due course!
What’s the way forward……
The UMA policy board and the electoral committee now need to engage in internal meetings aswell as consultations with stakeholders in the Industry. This incident has been the second of a kind in this entire electoral process, the first time, the election dates were pushed from Monday May 23 2022 to Monday 6th June 2022.
In a shocking manner, all these incidences have happened after one of the Presidential candidates, King Saha raised concerns, at this point, the big questions are, Is the UMA Electoral body running on the command of Saha? Is it that each time he barks UMA reacts in his favor? Is the body still able to conduct an election on their own or they need an external force? Where does this leave the UMA and the entire music industry?
The above questions are for you to ponder about and answer! We shall be updating you!
