Opposition leader Bobi Wine urges Ugandans to reject ‘fake’ election results

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Opposition leader Bobi Wine called on Ugandans on Tuesday to reject President Yoweri Museveni’s purported victory in last week’s elections and told the FT that a police “crackdown” on his supporters was under way.

Wine said he had escaped and had gone into hiding during a police raid on his home the day after Thursday’s polls, which took place amid a government-imposed internet blackout and the deployment of the army and police.

Official results gave octogenarian Museveni, who was seeking a seventh elected term in office, nearly 72 per cent of the vote to Wine’s 24 per cent, on a turnout of just over half the electorate.

Wine, a former pop star whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, described the results as “fake” and alleged widespread ballot stuffing took place.

“We did our part,” Wine said in a phone interview from an undisclosed hide-out. “Our democracy has been abused. The election has been rigged.”

He added that party members were collating evidence of election fraud and human rights abuses, but did not intend to challenge the results in court.

“What we are planning to do is to call upon the people of Uganda to reject [the results],” he said. “We are looking at all non-violent, legal options . . . but we don’t find any value going around in circles, going to a court that we know is not independent and is under the control of the regime.”

Election observers from the African Union, led by former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, criticised the “involvement of [the] military in the electoral process”, and said the internet shutdown had created public “mistrust and suspicion”.

There were some scattered protests in Kampala, the capital, last weekend, but nothing on the scale of what happened in neighbouring Tanzania during disputed polls last October, when the state oversaw a brutal crackdown.

In a speech on Sunday, Museveni, who took power in 1986 at the head of a rebel army, credited stability for his victory and said an “atmosphere of maximum unity” was returning to the country.  

He claimed that Wine’s National Unity Platform party had planned to attack polling stations in places where they were losing, and said some of its members were “terrorists”.

The president’s son and chief of defence forces, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has since threatened to kill Wine.

In a post on X, Kainerugaba gave the opposition leader “48 hours to surrender himself” or he would be treated as an “outlaw”.

“We have killed 22 NUP terrorists since last week,” Kainerugaba said. “I’m praying the 23rd is Kabobi,” he added, using a derogatory name for Wine.

A police spokesperson told local media on Monday that Wine is not being sought.

The former pop star, whose campaign for change has resonated among Uganda’s youthful population, especially in urban areas, said the homes of many of his party’s leaders had been raided, and there had been dozens of arrests as part of an “ongoing crackdown”.

His own future, he said, looked uncertain. “I don’t know because right now I am not safe anywhere in my country . . . I am in hiding now,” he told the FT. “But I cannot move.”