Longtime Ugandan ruler Yoweri Museveni has secured a seventh term as president, overcoming a second challenge by pop-star-turned-politician Bobi Wine, the country’s electoral authority said, in a race marred by violence and allegations of electoral interference and voter suppression.
Museveni, 81, won 71.65 percent of the vote in Thursday’s election, according to the Ugandan Electoral Commission. Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, won 24.72 percent. Museveni appoints the members of the commission.
Wine has contested the results. He has alleged widespread electoral fraud and ballot stuffing to benefit Museveni.
In a field of eight candidates, Wine, 43, was seen as Museveni’s main rival. He gained support among young voters with songs critical of Museveni’s government, but his emergence as a key opposition figure drew the attention of Museveni’s security forces.
Wine said Saturday he had escaped a police and military raid on his home. His National Unity Platform party said Friday that the Ugandan military had forced him into a helicopter and flown him to an unknown location. Police denied that account.
“I want to confirm that I managed to escape,” Wine wrote on social media Saturday, but his wife and other family members “remain under house arrest.” He did not reveal his location. “I am trying my best to keep safe.”
Police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke on Saturday told the Uganda Broadcasting Corp. that reports of Wine’s abduction were a “lie.” He denied that Wine had left his home.
The police, military and the National Unity Platform party did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Friday, Wine said Museveni’s security forces had surrounded his compound, effectively placing him on house arrest. He accused security forces of killing 21 of his supporters.
National Unity Platform spokesman Joel Besekezi Ssenyonyi told local media Friday that Ugandan military forces had cut power to Wine’s compound, scaled the fence surrounding the residence and began to break into the home. Wine said in his statement Saturday that the “commotion” and lack of access to his home had led neighbors to believe that he had been abducted.
Wine has been targeted in the past. He sought medical treatment in the United States in 2018; he said he had been tortured by the Ugandan military while in custody after a scuffle at a political rally in which his driver had been shot to death.
Museveni has led Uganda since his guerrilla fighters seized control in 1986. He promised to restore democracy and promote human rights. But since then, he has jailed political rivals and ordered violent crackdowns on anti-government protests while scrapping presidential age and term limits.
In the weeks leading up to Thursday’s contest, Ugandan security forces fired tear gas and pepper spray into opposition rallies and subjected attendees to arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture, according to Amnesty International.
On Tuesday, two days before Ugandans were scheduled to head to the polls, Museveni’s government cut off internet and phone lines, according to the monitoring group NetBlocks. The Uganda Communications Commission said it had temporarily suspended internet access and some mobile services to the country’s roughly 45 million people in an effort “to mitigate the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation, curb risks of electoral fraud, and prevent incitement to violence.”
NetBlocks Director Alp Toker confirmed in an email early Saturday that internet in the country had been disrupted for 92 hours, impacting “most connectivity available to the general public.” He added that Uganda imposed the same measures during its last elections in 2021.
Election day in Uganda got off to a chaotic start Thursday, with residents waiting in line for hours to cast their vote. At polling stations across the country, officials resorted to using paper registration records to manually verify voters after biometric machines failed.
Wine first challenged Museveni’s rule in 2021. During that contest, Museveni cast Wine as a destabilizing figure and ordered the government’s security forces to crack down on his political rallies with deadly force. Uganda’s security forces arrested Wine three times over the course of that race. They also arrested his lawyer and at least 600 of his rallygoers and killed his bodyguard.
Though Wine secured only a third of the 2021 vote, according to the official tally, Museveni received his smallest vote share since his first electoral campaign three decades ago, according to the Associated Press.
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