Museveni on course to win seventh term as Ugandan president

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Uganda’s lead opposition presidential candidate Bobi Wine has alleged widespread rigging and intimidation in Thursday’s vote, as octogenarian President Yoweri Museveni looked set to secure a seventh elected term in office.

Partial results announced by Uganda’s election commission on Friday morning from nearly half of polling stations showed Museveni leading with 76.25 per cent of the vote, compared with Wine’s 19.85 per cent. Wine’s supporters said their own tallies showed he was in the lead.

Despite an internet blackout — which the Uganda Communications Commission justified as a measure to keep the peace and prevent misinformation — allegations of abuses quickly emerged after Thursday’s polling. Activists used VPNs and peer-to-peer messaging to circumvent online restrictions.

Human rights groups and opposition members reported ballot stuffing, the harassment of election monitors and polling agents, and the arrest or abduction of activists — all of which looked set to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Museveni’s rule, now entering its fifth decade.  

The government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The world needs to know what is happening in Uganda,” said Bobi Wine, the 43-year-old former pop star turned presidential candidate whose energetic campaign promising change has placed him at the head of seven challengers.

“Internet switched off. Massive ballot stuffing reported everywhere. Our leaders . . . arrested. Many of our polling agents and supervisors abducted, and others chased off polling stations,” Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, wrote on X.

The poll was also marred by reports of biometric voting system failures and delays in the distribution of ballot materials.

The alleged abuses follow a pattern of broader erosion of civil liberties in east Africa, while uncertainty looms over how the country’s 81-year-old leader will manage a transition to new leadership.

Museveni became president in 1986 after waging a guerrilla war in the wake of 1980 elections he claimed were rigged. He wrote after seizing power that the “problem of Africa in general, and Uganda in particular, is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power”.

After leading the country through a sustained recovery from war and turmoil — and becoming a key western ally in east Africa — he campaigned this time on a platform of stability under the slogan “protecting the gains”.

However, huge crowds of Uganda’s rebellious and youthful population, more than three-quarters of which is under the age of 25, were drawn to Wine’s hopeful message of change.  

Wesley Kambale, a young Ugandan tech expert, responded to the internet blackout, which was imposed ahead of Thursday’s vote, by setting up a public database to record instances of vote rigging, intimidation and arrests. A proactive diaspora also found ways to circulate reports and images of election malpractice on Thursday.

“No matter what happens today or tomorrow, we must resist,” said Kambale. “Our country, and its future, will not survive five more years of corruption, nepotism, and human rights violations.”

The election-rigging allegations have attracted widespread international concern, following numerous other flawed recent elections on the continent, including in Tanzania and Cameroon. Few analysts, however, expect Museveni to face any serious consequences.

“It’s all well and good to criticise Africa’s military coups . . . but what if ‘elections’ are just as corrupt — Cameroon, Uganda etc — what can people do?” Tibor Nagy, former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, posted on Friday.

An international law firm assisting Wine warned that the government would at least face legal action as a result of the blackout.

“The decision by the Government of Uganda to shut down internet access represents a grave breach of international law,” said Amsterdam & Partners, which is based in Washington and London, adding that this would expose “the country to lawful countermeasures, institutional isolation and serious economic harm”.

“This measure is politically motivated, legally indefensible and designed to distort the electoral environment,” a spokesperson for the firm said.