President Yoweri Museveni and his political opponents in Uganda held their final rallies today, Tuesday, January 13, 2025, before the election scheduled for January 15, 2026.
Museveni, Africa’s third-longest governing President, seeks a seventh term to extend his time in office into a fifth decade after Thursday’s election.
Museveni first took power by force as the leader of the guerrilla army fighting to restore democratic rule after a period of civil war and the cruel dictatorship of Idi Amin.
He has been elected six times since 1996, nearly all of those polls marred by allegations of rigging and interference by the security forces.
His main opponent is the singer-turned-politician best known as Bobi Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu.
Six other candidates are running for president in the East African nation of roughly 45 million people. Electoral authorities say that there are 21.6 million registered voters.
Museveni and Wine are reprising their rivalry from the previous election in 2021, when Wine rattled authorities with a bold quest for leadership that appealed to mostly young people in the urban areas.
With voter turnout of 59%, Wine secured 35% of the ballots against Museveni’s 58%, the President’s smallest vote share since his first electoral campaign three decades ago.
The prominence of the opposition leader has since grown. The 43-year-old Wine appears to have kept much of his base intact in parts of eastern Uganda as well as the metropolitan area around Kampala, where he has held boisterous rallies while wearing a flak jacket and helmet to protect himself from gunfire.
Museveni, 81, has a loyal following across northern Uganda and his western home region. His supporters credit him with restoring relative peace and stability in a country that is home to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing violence elsewhere.
Museveni campaigned under the banner of “protecting the gains,” a term some see as misguided, because it evokes concerns about largesse from rampant official corruption. Others also perceive a measure of force in the slogan, suggesting power isn’t negotiable.
Brussels-based nongovernmental organization International Crisis Group said recently that Museveni “will likely retain power in forthcoming polls.”
Many in Uganda’s governing party, known as the National Resistance Movement, have suggested that Museveni would never hand power to Wine if the challenger won the election.
Critics charge that the election is simply a ritual to keep Museveni in power, not a fair exercise that could possibly lead to a change of government in the east African nation of 45 million.
Mobile Internet Providers Directed To Temporarily Suspend Services Before Election
Meanwhile, the Uganda Communications Commission directed mobile internet providers to temporarily suspend services less than 48 hours before the election, citing misinformation, electoral fraud and incitement of violence.
According to a letter to the internet companies, restoration of internet services will only be done after the commission issues a notice to providers.
Authorities will oversee the election with soldiers in the streets; deployments that have alarmed opposition figures who see signs of the authoritarianism they want to do away with.
Ugandan authorities began deploying troops on Saturday in parts of the capital, Kampala, with armored trucks spreading into different parts of the city and soldiers patrolling the streets.
Military Spokesman Col. Chris Magezi said that the deployment was meant to deter violence, rejecting concerns that the mobilization was anti-democratic.
“No cause for alarm..However, we do not take threats of violence during the election period by some political actors and their supporters lightly.”
Col. Chris Magezi
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