Joseph Kabuleta, the president of the National Economic Empowerment Dialogue (NEED), has petitioned the Electoral Commission (EC), challenging its decision to block his nomination for the 2026 presidential elections.
He alleges that the nomination process was mishandled, opaque, and compromised by deliberate delays and procedural irregularities.
“I hastily gathered more signatures in excess of the required number and submitted the same on September,22, 2025, and the same were duly received. However, the report was given to us at 9:42 pm on the same day, after officials further queried signatures from eight districts,” Kabuleta said.
He said when he further submitted more signatures and followed up on the progress of the verification, he and his team were told they had not been verified.
According to Kabuleta, the motive of the verification and methodology deployed by the Electoral Commission was questionable as it “lacked transparency or any form of fairness since no justification or reason was provided for the impugned query.”
He says he was shocked when by the closure of the nomination period, his candidature had not been considered and that the Electoral Commission only communicated its response at 5:25, an hour and 25 minutes after the closure of the exercise.
Complaint
Kabuleta says he is not happy with the manner in which the nomination was handled by the Electoral Commission.
“The process was tainted by the sheer incompetence of the officials of the Electoral Commission, an Unthinkable lack of professionalism, a lack of transparency in the process of verification of signatures, and, in our case as a party, instances of sabotage and influence peddling from bad elements claiming to be members of the party,” he says.
“There was also an attempt at controlling and compromising the options and choices that Ugandans have chosen, contrary to the Constitution of Uganda as well as deliberately blocking aspirants from nomination without any justifiable reasons.”
He now wants the Electoral Commission to review of the process thus far and approve the submitted signatures, and issue a certificate of clearance to him.
Kabuleta also wants the EC to extend the timeline and have him nominated and reinstated in the 2026 presidential race.
The 2026 presidential race has already seen several high-profile candidates cleared by the EC. These include incumbent President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of the National Resistance Movement (NRM), National Unity Platform (NUP) leader Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, also known as Bobi Wine, as well as Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) leader Mugisha Muntu, Democratic Party (DP) president Norbert Mao, and Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) flagbearer Patrick Amuriat.
Kabuleta, who ran in the 2021 elections and is known for his strong stance on economic justice and national sovereignty, was expected to be one of the key challengers in the 2026 polls.
