Ugandan president heads to victory as his main rival cries scandal
Wycliffe Muia,
Sammy Awami,ABC,And
Lucy Fleming
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Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni took a commanding lead in Thursday’s presidential election, well ahead of his main challenger Bobi Wine, whose party has already cast doubt on the credibility of the results.
So far, the figures give Museveni 75% of the vote, to Wine’s 21%, based on results from 70% of polling stations.
Wine’s party said on social media that a helicopter landed on the grounds of his house in Kampala, the capital, and “forcibly took him to an unknown destination.”
Internet access has been cut, making this claim difficult to verify. Local police told the BBC they were unaware of the incident.
Earlier, Wine said he had been placed under house arrest and that security forces were surrounding his home.
At this point, police spokesperson Kituuma Rusoke told local broadcaster NBS that as a presidential candidate, Wine was “a person of interest”, adding that the massive deployment of security around his home was for his own safety.
Some local journalists said security forces prevented them from accessing the opposition leader’s home in Kampala’s Magere district.
Wine also asked his supporters to ignore the “false results” announced, saying the authorities had “stolen the vote.” He has provided no evidence to support his claims and authorities have not responded to his allegations.
On Thursday evening, at least seven opposition supporters were killed in controversial circumstances in Butambala, about 55 kilometers southwest of the capital.
An internet shutdown imposed earlier in the week meant news of the violence only emerged on Friday.
MP Muwanga Kivumbi, from Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP), told the AFP news agency that soldiers and police fired tear gas and then live ammunition at hundreds of people watching the announcement of the first results at his home.
“Ten people were killed inside my house,” he said.
Human rights activist Agather Atuhaire confirmed this account to the Reuters news agency.
However, local police spokesperson Lydia Tumushabe disputes this claim, saying police fired in self-defense after “a group of NUP henchmen” attacked a police station and planned to invade a counting center.
She told Reuters they were carrying machetes, axes and matchboxes and that at least seven people were killed.
Later Friday, the U.S. Embassy issued an alert to its citizens due to reports that security forces were “using tear gas and shooting into the air to disperse gatherings.”
After the 2021 elections, in which he received 35% of the vote, Wine was confined to his home for several days by security forces.
Electoral chief Simon Byabakama said on Friday that the vote count had not been affected by the internet outage because the commission was using a “private system” to transmit constituency results to the national counting center.
Asked about the timeline for announcing the final results, Byabakama said: “We are on track to announce the winner of the presidential election within 48 hours. Before 5 p.m. [14:00 GMT] tomorrow we will have the final results.
Thursday’s election follows an often violent campaign, during which President Museveni, 81, is seeking a seventh term. He first took power as a rebel leader in 1986.
Wine, a 43-year-old pop star turned politician who says he represents youth in a country where most of the population is under 30, has vowed to fight corruption and impose sweeping reforms, while Museveni says he is the only guarantor of stability and progress in Uganda.
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Last week, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said the elections would be marked by “widespread repression and intimidation.”
During Thursday’s vote, voting was delayed for up to four hours at many polling stations across the country because ballot boxes were slow to arrive and biometric machines, used to verify voters’ identities, were not working properly.
Some linked the problems to the network outage.
Although there are six other candidates, the presidential election is a two-horse race between Museveni and Wine.
The campaign period was marked by disruption of opposition activities: security forces were accused of assaulting and arresting Wine supporters.
Rusoke, the police spokesman, dismissed the complaints, accusing opposition supporters of being disruptive.
Internet access was suspended on Tuesday, with the Uganda Communications Commission saying the shutdown was necessary to prevent misinformation, fraud and incitement to violence – a move condemned by the UN human rights office as “deeply worrying”.
Additional reporting by Sammy Awami in Kampala
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