{"id":26753,"date":"2026-01-16T09:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T09:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/26753\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T09:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T09:08:15","slug":"vote-counting-underway-in-uganda-as-opposition-leader-criticizes-process-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/26753\/","title":{"rendered":"Vote counting underway in Uganda as opposition leader criticizes process"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMPALA \u2013 Vote counting was underway Friday in Uganda\u2019s tense presidential election<\/a>, which was held a day earlier amid an internet shutdown, voting delays and complaints by an opposition leader who said some of his polling agents had been detained by the authorities.<\/p>\n

Opposition leader Bobi Wine<\/a> said Thursday he was unable to leave his house and that his polling agents in rural areas were abducted before voting started, undermining his efforts to prevent electoral offenses such as ballot stuffing.<\/p>\n

Wine is hoping to end President Yoweri Museveni’s four-decade rule in an election<\/a> during which the military was deployed<\/a> and heavy security was posted outside his house near Kampala, the Ugandan capital, after the vote.<\/p>\n

The musician-turned-politician wrote on X on Thursday that a senior party official in charge of the western region had been arrested, adding there was \u201cmassive ballot stuffing everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rural Uganda, especially the western part of the country, is a ruling-party stronghold, and the opposition would be disadvantaged by not having polling agents present during vote counting.<\/p>\n

To try to improve his chances of winning, Wine had urged his supporters to \u201cprotect the vote\u201d by having witnesses document alleged offenses at polling stations, in addition to deploying official polling agents.<\/p>\n

Wine faced similar setbacks when he first ran for president five years ago. Museveni took 58% of the vote, while Wine got 35%, according to official results. Wine said at the time that the election had been rigged in favor of Museveni, who has spoken disparagingly of his rival.<\/p>\n

Museveni, after voting on Thursday, said the opposition had infiltrated the 2021 election and defended the use of biometric machines as a way of securing the vote in this election.<\/p>\n

Museveni has served the third-longest tenure of any African leader and is seeking to extend his rule into a fifth decade. The aging president\u2019s authority has become increasingly dependent on the military, which is led by his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Uganda has not witnessed a peaceful transfer of presidential power since independence from British colonial rule six decades ago.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KAMPALA \u2013 Vote counting was underway Friday in Uganda\u2019s tense presidential election, which was held a day earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1260,153,242,2564],"class_list":{"0":"post-26753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uganda","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-uganda","10":"tag-world-news","11":"tag-yoweri-museveni"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753","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=26753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}