Ugandan opposition leader, Bobi Wine has filed a legal petition in the country’s Supreme Court, seeking cancellation of last month’s election results that handed incumbent President Yoweri Museveni the victory.
The Ugandan President was declared the winner of the polls with 59 percent of the vote whiles Bobi Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, was said to have won 35 percent.
“What we want from the court is nullification of that election where Museveni was declared. We do not want him to participate in elections in Uganda again because he is an agent of violence,” said Medard Ssegona, the lead lawyer acting on behalf of Wine and his National Unity Platform party (NUP).
“All elections he has participated in have been violent elections. He is a common denominator in the electoral violence of this country. We don’t want him to participate again.”
The lawyer repeated claims by Bobi Wine alleging that the military was stuffing ballot boxes, casting ballots for people and chasing voters away from polling stations during the election.
“There was outright ballot-stuffing, there was intimidation of NUP agents and supporters, some were arrested on the eve of the election, there was pre-ticking of ballots.
“We have come to report the thieves. We know who stole them [votes] … We have collected and we are still collecting evidence. We have brought it to the courts of law. The suspects [respondents] are three – Yoweri Museveni, Electoral Commission of Uganda and Attorney-General of this republic. We have done the paperwork and we are still collecting evidence.
“We have gone through a lot. We have been in the hiding because we knew they wanted these documents.”
Joel Ssenyonyi, a spokesperson for Wine’s party, earlier disclosed that there were two schools of thought among members and supporters about the decision to take legal action.
“There are those saying going to court is a waste of time. It’s just going to legitimise Museveni because we know how the courts will rule and we agree. We don’t have 100% trust in the courts.
“The other… though we know the court justices are appointed by Museveni and they have always ruled things in his favour, we shall get to use it as a platform to expose the fraud that this election was. We have overwhelming evidence for the court to base its verdict. The courts are on trial. Let’s see how they [the judges] deal with this situation.”
President Museveni has however dismissed allegations of vote-rigging, calling the election “the most cheating-free” since independence from Britain in 1962.
Rogers Mulindwa, a spokesman for the President’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) party told reporters that though “the petition did not have much chance of succeeding, it showed the judiciary could be trusted to adjudicate over the dispute fairly.
“Kyagulanyi (Wine) is trying to give his supporters a soft landing but he knows he lost genuinely.”
This is the fourth petition President Museveni has faced, with the veteran opposition leader Kizza Besigye challenging him in 2001 and 2006 and the former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi launching a court challenge in 2016.
