Ugandans vote in an election expected to extend President Yoweri Museveni\u2019s 40-year rule amid fears of a crackdown and pre-poll intimidation.<\/p>\n
KAMPALA: Ugandans will vote in elections on Thursday which are all but guaranteed to extend the 40-year rule of President Yoweri Museveni.<\/p>\n
The 81-year-old incumbent faces singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine, who is taking a second run at the presidency after his 2021 campaign ended in bloodshed.<\/p>\n
Rights groups and international monitors have accused Ugandan authorities of arrests, abductions, and media intimidation in the run-up to the polls.<\/p>\n
Kampala has been quiet in recent days as residents headed home to their villages to vote or take shelter.<\/p>\n
Wine campaigned in a flak jacket, saying the race has become a \u201cwar\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey cannot abduct all of us. The jails are already full and we are still millions of change-seeking Ugandans out there,\u201d he said at a rally last week.<\/p>\n
Fears of a repeat of the 2021 violence are scaring some Ugandans.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople lost their lives, people lost their things, so it frightened us,\u201d Kampala resident Winnie Promise Nantume told AFP.<\/p>\n
There are also concerns of a wider erosion of democracy in east Africa after violent elections in neighbouring Tanzania.<\/p>\n
Museveni is the third-longest serving president on the African continent.<\/p>\n
More than 70% of Uganda\u2019s population is under 30 and have known nothing but Museveni\u2019s rule.<\/p>\n
To many, he is still the father of the nation who rescued the country from political and economic chaos.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could say that these elections are kind of a shadow play,\u201d Kristof Titeca, an expert on Uganda at Antwerp university, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key questions are not the elections, but what comes after, i.e. the transition.\u201d<\/p>\n
Museveni\u2019s son, army chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, has made no secret of his desire to rule as his father\u2019s age forces him to scale back.<\/p>\n
Wine\u2019s rallies have drawn larger crowds than many expected, keeping up pressure despite the risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of our leaders are being picked up, arrested, abducted,\u201d David Lewis Rubongoya, secretary-general of Wine\u2019s party, told AFP.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International says roughly 400 people have been arrested for supporting Wine\u2019s National Unity Platform in recent months.<\/p>\n
The only other significant opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, remains behind bars on treason charges after being kidnapped in Kenya last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ugandans vote in an election expected to extend President Yoweri Museveni\u2019s 40-year rule amid fears of a crackdown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[2563,9519,5999,1202,153],"class_list":{"0":"post-18638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-bobi-wine","9":"tag-crackdown","10":"tag-election","11":"tag-museveni","12":"tag-uganda"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}