Pesacheck is an East-African fact checker organisation. It had already struck me that many of the fact-checks they were doing were totally irrelevant or biased towards the Museveni dictatorship.
For example, they factchecked a tweet with 40 retweets that a voter got tortured for not voting Museveni. Actually, it was a photo from Ghana. Factcheck succeeded.
However, no reference is made to the fact that disappearances and torture happen on a large scale. This has been documented by Al Jazeera. None of the real Ugandan torture stories have been factchecked by Pesacheck. An outsider is left with the impression that in general the stories about torture in Uganda are false.
On 31 March they published the following factcheck:
Obviously it’s a great idea to double check such an important statement. Let’s look at the reasoning provided by Pesacheck.
Basically Pesacheck is saying; the EC is the authority for elections, whatever they say about it is true. Well, this does not meet their own principles 2.1.
I do agree that reputation can be a part of your analysis. However, the Electoral Commission does not have a good reputation at all. Just some examples:
- In 2016, the European Union observation mission stated that the EC is not sufficiently independent from the Ugandan government.
- The EC chairman spoke out publicly against the National Unity Platform
- National Unity Platform and FDC were not able to campaign. Complaints were dismissed.
- EC has never investigated the hundreds of polling stations in 2016 and in 2021 that have a 100% voter turnout; where even dead people have voted.
- On March 1st the EC published a DoR that is highly suspicious and likely the result of fraud. The EC has never given any further comment.
Interestingly, none of these five items have been the subject of any factcheck by Pesacheck, or are they mentioned anywhere in their analysis.
My conclusion is that the Pesacheck factchecks are a joke. Especially dictator Museveni is having a good laugh.