Uganda - Election 2021
Ugandans voted on 14 January 2021 to elect their next president and lawmakers. On December 20, 2017, the Ugandan Parliament passed an amendment to the Constitution which, among other measures, aims to eliminate the requirement that candidates vying for the presidency be under 75 years of age. The abrogation of the age requirement clears the way for the 73-year-old Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986 and whose current term in office ends in 2021, to seek reelection.
Robert Kyagulanyi - a pop star-turned-politician who is known by the stage name Bobi Wine - is recognised as the new face of Uganda's opposition. Bobi Wine's popularity is considered a threat to President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office for more than 30 years. "I have never realistically experienced a Uganda with another president. And it is more than 80 percent of Ugandans that are in the same situation," Bobi Wine tells Al Jazeera. "That really gets us disturbed. We have been denied an opportunity to contribute to our country. We have been excluded as a new generation. And we desire to contribute to building our country, which we know we are going to live in."
"Certainly, the people making decisions for us are not going to be there to either benefit or suffer from the decisions - which are evidently wrong - that they are making for us." The Ugandan government has arrested and prosecuted Bobi Wine several times, and the opposition figure has accused security forces of torturing him.
He is directly challenging President Museveni in elections expected to be held in 2021. "We know that Museveni is planning to rig the election, he has done it in the past ... But we are banking on overwhelming him because a vote can easily be rigged if it's not overwhelming," says Bobi Wine. "And ultimately, if President Museveni tries to rig the election ... the people of Uganda will rise up and they will stop it ... They are tired of this operation and they are tired and they will not take it any longer." But Wine stresses that he does not believe in violence and that they are using and will continue to use "all legitimate and legal ways of defending our voice."
In July 2020, Wine officially launched a political party called National Unity Platform (NUP) to enable the People Power Movement (PPM) to contest the 2021 election. Bobi Wine joined politics in 2017 after winning a parliamentary by-election. His presidential bid has stirred significant support especially among the country's youth drawn by his use of music to spotlight rampant rights abuses, corruption and Museveni's long rule.
Uganda is among the countries with the world's youngest populaces. Some 77% of people are under 25. The median age in Uganda is 17 years. The Ugandan Parliament and the Electoral Commission are at loggerheads following revelations that over a million Ugandans who have just turned 18 will not be allowed to vote in the 2021 general elections. The Uganda National Electoral Commission said it did not have the resources or time to register new voters as they are busy rolling out the electoral process for the vote. The exclusion of voters is nothing new in Uganda. Elections have often been marred by irregularities, such as the banning of opposition supporters, and despite calls to modernize the register, electoral officials are resistant. "It's so ridiculous that any government or electoral commission that is mandated to its citizens can ever think of disenfranchising a million people from voting," Godber Tumushabe from the Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies told DW. If they were more organized, they could organize the registration of voters up to December 2020 and have the election in January 2021. What they are saying is essentially a demonstration of incompetence.
Political observers say the blocking of young voters could be an attempt to prevent supporters of the 2021 opposition presidential hopeful Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, from voting. The popstar-turned-politician boasts a large youth following. In January, authorities prevented Wine from holding a public meeting, where he planned to discuss his proposed to challenge longtime President Yoweri Museveni. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd of his supporters. The meeting had initially been authorized by electoral authorities.
By mid-2020, as incumbent Yoweri Museveni showed up top in the opinion polls, his more youthful rival Bobi Wine was winning over ruling party MPs and making new allies. While nominations are due to start in September, according to the electoral roadmap, politicians have been shifting their allegiances. Various Members of Parliament from the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and other opposition parties have switched to Bobi Wine's People Power Movement (PPM).
Wine is not the only one preparing to take on the long-serving president. Others include Henry Tumukunde, a Museveni ally who previously served as national security minister. The 61-year-old has launched his own platform. "I would like to formally announce to all Ugandans that I will be contesting for the presidency in the forthcoming general election as an independent candidate under the platform called Renewed Uganda," Tumukunde said.
A few old hands at running for office are not taking part in the 2021 election. Kizza Besigye who has challenged Museveni four times since 2001 says he will not contest any election organized under the ruling NRM. The former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) president and Wine have joined forces in a new alliance called the United Forces of Change.
A Ugandan court on 20 November 2020 charged opposition leader Bobi Wine over an election rally that allegedly flouted COVID-19 rules, then freed him on bail. The move came after his detention sparked violence in the capital, Kampala, and nearby cities that left 37 dead in what has been described as the country's worst unrest in a decade. Wine was charged with "doing an act likely to spread infectious diseases contrary to the penal code and rules of the public health on Covid-19," said judiciary spokesman Solomon Muyita. Human Rights Watch said Wine's arrest was a sign of "growing repression of opposition politicians ahead of Uganda’s national elections scheduled for January 2021."
Ugandan opposition leader Bobi Wine on 15 Janaury 2021 claimed victory in a presidential election, rejecting early results which gave President Yoweri Museveni a wide lead. The internet remained down for a third day as vote counting continued, with provisional results from 29 percent of polling stations giving Museveni an early lead of 63 percent while Wine trailed with 28 percent.
"I am very confident that we defeated the dictator by far. I call upon all Ugandans to reject the blackmail. We have certainly won the election and we've won it by far," he told journalists. The 38-year-old former ragga singer turned politician has been the main rival to Uganda's veteran leader who has been in power since 1986 and is seeking a sixth term in office. "The people of Uganda voted massively for change of leadership from a dictatorship to a democratic government. But Mr. Museveni is trying to paint a picture that he is in the lead. What a joke!" said Wine. He said the election was marred by "illegal, high handed actions which Museveni and his regime of blood have undertaken to set stage for the worst rigging this country has even witnessed."
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni won a decisive re-election victory, elections officials said, but his main rival Bobi Wine alleged widespread fraud and said citizens should reject the result. Museveni won 5.85 million votes, or 58.6%, while main opposition candidate Wine had 3.48 million votes (34.8%), the Electoral Commission said at a news conference 16 January 2021 on the final results from the election.
Wine accused Museveni of fabricating the results and called the poll "the most fraudulent election in the history of Uganda". Wine said his home in the capital, Kampala, was surrounded by hundreds of soldiers and that the military was not allowing him to leave. The army's deputy spokesman, Deo Akiiki, told Reuters that security officers at Wine's house were assessing threats he could face by going out: "So they might be preventing him in the interest of his own safety."
The run-up to the election was more violent than in previous polls. Security forces cracked down on opposition candidates and their supporters during the campaign, and more than 50 people died in protests in November on one of the multiple occasions when Wine was arrested. In addition to the internet blackout, the government banned all social media and messaging apps.
In the parliamentary election, where candidates were vying for 529 seats, Ugandan media reported that 56 candidates from Wine's National Unity Platform (NUP) had won their races, while the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), previously the largest opposition party, has so far won 34 seats. The FDC won 35 seats in the 2016 election, but the NUP had no seats in the previous parliament.
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