KAMPALA, Uganda – Uganda’s election commission said on Saturday that President Yoweri Museveni won a sixth five-year term, extending his government to four decades, while opposition challenger Bobi Wine rejected “fabricated fraudulent results” and officials fought to explain how the research results were compiled amid an Internet blackout.
In a generational conflict observed across the African continent with an expanding young population and a series of aging leaders, the 38-year-old singer who became legislator Wine represented Museveni’s biggest challenge to date. The self-described “ghetto president” had strong support in urban centers, where frustration with unemployment and corruption is high. He claimed victory.
In a telephone interview from his home, which he said was surrounded by soldiers who would not let him out, Wine urged the international community to “please call General Museveni to order”, withholding help, imposing sanctions and using legislation Magnitsky to hold alleged responsible human rights users.
Wine repeated that all legal options are being considered, including challenging the results in court and calling for peaceful protests.
The electoral commission said Museveni received 58 percent of the ballots and Wine 34 percent, and voter turnout was 52 people, in a process that the United States’ top diplomat in Africa called “fundamentally flawed”.
The commission advised the celebrating people to remember the precautions of Covid-19, but the reaction in the capital, Kampala, was silenced. At one point, hundreds of Museveni supporters on motorcycles passed by, honking and shouting. The military remained on the streets.
AP journalists who tried to reach Wine’s house on the outskirts of Kampala were refused by the police. Wine said he was alone with his wife, Barbie, and a single security guard after the police told a private security company to withdraw their protection before Thursday’s elections.
“I’m alive,” said Wine. After declaring that “the world is watching” on the eve of the vote, he said “I don’t know what will happen to me and my wife” now. He said he will not leave Uganda and abandon its 45 million inhabitants to the kind of treatment he has faced.
The vote followed the worst pre-election violence in the East African country since Museveni, 76, took office in 1986. Wine and other candidates were beaten or harassed, and more than 50 people were killed when security forces security suppressed riots in November. your prison. Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, was detained several times during the campaign, but was never convicted. He said he feared for his life.
This month, Wine filed a petition with the International Criminal Court for alleged torture and other abuses by security forces and appointed several officials, including Museveni.
In response to its allegations of electoral fraud, the Uganda electoral commission said that Wine should prove it. Wine says he has video evidence and will share it as soon as Internet access is restored.
Museveni said in a national speech that “I think this may be the most cheat-free election since 1962”, or the independence of Britain.
The electoral commission deflected questions about how the results of voting across the country were broadcast during the Internet blackout, saying “we designed our own system”.
“We did not receive any top orders during this election,” committee chairman Simon Byabakama told reporters, adding that his team “was neither intimidated nor threatened”.
While the president remains in power, at least nine of his cabinet ministers, including the vice president, were eliminated in parliamentary elections, many losing to Wine’s party candidates, local media reported.
Tracking the vote was made even more complicated by the arrests of independent monitors and the denial of accreditation to most members of the U.S. observation mission, prompting the U.S. to cancel it. The European Union said its offer to send election experts “was not accepted”.
“Uganda’s electoral process was fundamentally flawed,” tweeted the top US diplomat for Africa, Tibor Nagy, warning that “the US response depends on what the Ugandan government does now.”
Museveni, previously praised as part of a new generation of African leaders and a longtime US security ally, still has support in Uganda to bring stability. He once criticized African leaders who refused to step down, but have since supervised the removal of mandate limits and an age limit for the presidency.
He repeatedly claimed that foreign groups were trying to meddle in this election, without providing evidence. He accused Wine of being “an agent of foreign interests”. The wine denies it.
The head of the African Union observer team, Samuel Azuu Fonkam, told reporters he could not say whether the elections were free and fair, referring to the “limited” mission that focused mainly on Kampala. Asked about Wine’s claims of manipulation, he said he could not “talk about things we didn’t see or observe”.
The East African Community observer team noted “disproportionate use of force in some cases” by the security forces, the shutdown of the Internet, some late-opening polling stations and isolated cases of biometric kit failures to verify voters. But he called the vote largely peaceful and said it “demonstrated the level of maturity expected of a democracy”.
Elections in Uganda are often marked by allegations of fraud and abuse by security forces.