Ugandan President dwells on fraud | …

Unsurprisingly, eternal Ugandan President Yoweni Museveri has just declared himself the winner of his fifth election. At 76, he has already been in power for 35 years and now has five more. His main opponent was a 38-year-old rapper, the country’s biggest pop star, who rose to popularity singing about corruption and state violence in his very poor country. Bobi Wine – or Tito Vino, in Creole – denounced electoral fraud and was universally supported by the opposition, all the NGOs that sent observers and even the American embassy. Museweni is of the generation that fought Idi Amin Dada, the mad dictator, and built an increasingly authoritarian power structure but with a pro-Western discourse. Uganda is not only seen as a fundamental part of the counterterrorism plan in Africa, but it is sending troops to Somalia to fight Al Shabab and Afghanistan as “private” security for US troops. This is what allowed him to survive so many years in power without the repression of all forms of organized opposition and the imprisonment of politicians and figures like Wine creating serious questions.

This year’s elections were a notable example of how the regime works. With the excuse of the coronavirus, all kinds of meetings and events were banned, unless they were from the ruling party. The level of censorship was total, with Wine banned from all radio and television channels, and teams covering opposition posters with Museweni election posters every evening. Wine was even arrested for going to the election office to register his candidacy, accused of violating quarantine. His arrest brought thousands of Ugandans into the streets, who were beaten down with bullets: there were 54 dead.

The opposition movement gained in strength, however, and Museweni began accusing it of being a puppet of “foreign agents” and “homosexuals”, and of threatening a “revolutionary movement that would devastate the country”. Wine asked him to resign and was arrested again, this time for sedition. Thursday’s elections came in a week in which the government disconnected the internet and social media, banned mentioning the opposition candidate in the media and filled the streets of towns with police and military personnel. The electoral act is full of arrests of observers of parties and NGOs, and the magical disappearance of the ballot boxes. Museweni was declared the winner with 59% of the vote.

To all this, Bobi Wine, real name Robert Kyagulanyi, denounced the Kampala government before the International Court of Justice for its human rights abuses. Museweni accused him of slandering the nation and detained him again, despite being under house arrest. This is how the main opposition candidate spent the end of the electoral campaign and polling day in custody, locked up at his home. In fact, he is there, with the phone cut off and soldiers in his garden: his wife was beaten for going to the back to look for vegetables in the garden.