The United States of America (US) will not be part of the 2021 Uganda elections observers after her mission in the Pearl pulled out of the process.

In a statement written by Natalie Brown the US Ambassador, the decision was made after Uganda denied more than 75% of the US election observer accreditations requested by her country.

“With only 15 accreditations approved, it is not possible for the United States to meaningfully observe the conduct of Uganda’s elections at polling sites across the country,” the statement from Ambassador Brown reads.

It is important to note that for the 2016 elections, the US Mission dispatched 88 observers.

Ambassador Brown says that the Mission has made multiple requests to the Electoral Commission to provide an explanation for their decision to limit the US observers but have not received any.

“For the January 14 election, the U.S. Mission complied with all Electoral Commission accreditation requirements, as we had in previous elections in Uganda, but the vast majority of our requests for 2021 were not approved,” Ambassador Brown says.

The US Mission is not the first to make the decision of not providing observers to Uganda for the 14th January elections. Back in June 2020, the European Union (EU) made the decision not to deploy an observer mission for the 2021 Ugandan elections.

In his explanation,  Attilio Pacifici the head of the EU delegation pointed out the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, failure by the government to carry out any reforms in line with the recommendations that EU observer teams have been making over the last 15 years and failure by the government to send a formal invitation to the EU to send such a team as the three reasons that informed the Union’s decision to keep away from the elections.

Over the years, Uganda's election has also been observed by teams from the Commonwealth, the African Union, and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), among others. Such teams are involved in monitoring campaigns, preparations for the election, polling, vote counting, the results processes, and the overall electoral environment.

“This makes the decision now to deny accreditation to all but a small, randomly selected handful of our observers all the more troubling,” Ambassador Brown mentioned in the statement.

On Thursday, Ugandans will involve themselves in electing a President and Members Of Parliament. The electoral process has been stained with incidents of violence that led to the deaths of some and accusations from the opposition of unfair treatment by state instruments like the electoral commission and the police.