Prominent journalist Solomon Sserwanjja has emerged victorious in the election for Local Council One (LC1) chairperson of Bamutakudde Village, located in Kyampisi Sub-county, Mukono District. The race proved highly competitive.

During the voting held on Tuesday, Sserwanjja received 106 votes, edging out his closest rival, National Unity Platform (NUP) candidate Badru Lule, who obtained 105 votes.

In a media briefing conducted shortly before the polls, Sserwanjja committed to covering allowances for his Local Council committee members out of his own pocket. He emphasized that village leaders who invest substantial time and effort in community service merit proper compensation.

“I come from a rich village, and I will personally pay my committee members because leaders should not expect people who do the donkey work and spend an entire month in the office to serve without pay,” he stated.

This election forms part of Uganda’s first nationwide LC1 polls in years, with residents in over 71,000 villages choosing new chairpersons after multiple delays. The country previously conducted such village-level elections on July 10, 2018—the first in 17 years since the 2001 polls.

Parliament had extended the terms of existing LC1 leaders six times, with each extension lasting six months. Uganda’s Local Council system originated in 1986, introduced by President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement as Resistance Councils to encourage local participation in governance. The inaugural elections under this framework took place in 1989 via the lining-up method, where voters physically stand behind their preferred candidate—a practice still employed today.