An armed Ugandan riot policeman patrols previous marketing campaign posters for longtime President Yoweri Museveni.
Ben Curtis/AP
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Ben Curtis/AP
LAGOS, Nigeria — Thousands and thousands of Ugandans are voting Thursday in a tense presidential election as 81-year-old President Yoweri Museveni seeks to increase his four-decade grip on energy.
Museveni, one in all Africa’s longest-serving leaders, faces a well-recognized challenger: 43-year-old pop star-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi, extra extensively referred to as Bobi Wine. It is a rematch of the 2021 election, when Museveni was declared the winner amid widespread allegations of fraud.
5 different candidates are additionally working on this 12 months’s election, with 21.6 million registered voters anticipated to forged ballots.
Heavy safety and rising rigidity
The vote is happening beneath an web blackout and a heavy army presence. Lots of of activists have been detained, and journalists and human rights teams face restrictions, measures the federal government calls essential for safety.
On Tuesday, the Uganda Communications Fee instructed cell operators and web service suppliers that the blackout was imposed on the “strong recommendations” of safety businesses.
“This temporary suspension is a precautionary intervention to ensure peace, protect national stability and prevent the misuse of communication platforms during a sensitive national exercise,” the fee stated in a letter.
An entrenched chief
For the seventh election in a row, Museveni’s marketing campaign has stuffed the streets of the capital, Kampala. At one of many closing rallies earlier than the vote, a marching band led hundreds of supporters. Many wore yellow T-shirts and caps emblazoned with the insignia of the ruling Nationwide Resistance Motion — and pictures of the octogenarian president.
A musician warms up his trumpet earlier than performing for supporters of Uganda’s incumbent president, Yoweri Museveni, forward of his get together’s closing marketing campaign rally.
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AFP/through Getty Pictures
Addressing the group in his closing rally on Tuesday, Museveni reduce a weathered determine, itemizing achievements in infrastructure and safety. After almost 40 years in energy, he argued that solely his continued rule might protect them.
However in 1986, the 12 months he got here to energy, Museveni made a unique case. He wrote that “the problem of Africa in general, and Uganda in particular, is not the people but leaders who want to overstay in power.”
4 a long time on, these phrases echo again at him as Uganda — in addition to a rising variety of nations throughout the continent — grapples with the identical problem.
The nation has by no means skilled a peaceable switch of energy between elected leaders since gaining independence, making these elections particularly consequential.
A youthful voters
Uganda has one of many youngest populations on the planet. An amazing majority of its 50 million persons are beneath age 40 and have solely ever recognized one president.
Ugandan opposition presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, who is called Bobi Wine, waves to supporters at an election marketing campaign rally in Mukono, Uganda, on Jan. 9.
Hajarah Nalwadda/AP
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Hajarah Nalwadda/AP
Frustration amongst youthful Ugandans has fueled assist for Bobi Wine, chief of the Nationwide Unity Platform. The musician-turned-politician has drawn massive crowds, notably amongst city youth, campaigning on guarantees to ease financial hardship and finish what he calls “family rule.”
Museveni’s son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the nation’s high army commander, is extensively seen as his father’s inheritor. Identified for his erratic social media exercise, he has ceaselessly posted about his assumption that he’ll assume energy.
“It’s like the government is at war with its people”
Uganda is a big geopolitical actor in East Africa, with troops deployed throughout the continent. The election comes amid regional instability: Tanzania skilled violent protests throughout its October elections, and Kenya has seen lethal anti-government demonstrations lately. In Uganda too, as in 2021 — when violence and protests erupted across the vote — many concern this election might unleash comparable unrest.
For Western governments, Museveni stays strategically precious. He has deployed troops to regional hassle spots and just lately agreed to just accept U.S. deportees, incomes favor with the Trump administration regardless of long-standing issues over his human rights document.
Even when Wine have been to win sufficient votes, many observers say he would face formidable obstacles to taking energy.
Police have repeatedly used tear fuel to interrupt up his rallies, and several other of his supporters have been arrested. Wine himself usually campaigns sporting a flak jacket and helmet, a stark reminder of the dangers he faces. He has been detained and crushed a number of occasions and was shot within the leg by police two years in the past.
“It’s like the government is at war with its people,” stated Miria Matembe, a lawyer and former opposition politician.
Matembe says that opposition teams had been blocked from campaigning and organizing freely and that voters had even been barred from staying behind to watch the rely after casting their ballots.
However she provides that, regardless of the official consequence, for a lot of pissed off with the federal government, the vote stays a uncommon alternative to talk out.
Halima Athumani and Emmanuel Igunza contributed reporting from Uganda.
