Museveni headed for comfortable win

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was on Saturday night headed for a comfortable win and an unprecedented fourth elective term in office.

Results from Uganda’s electoral commission indicated that President Museveni had garnered about 70 per cent of the votes last evening when more than half of the votes had been counted.

But Mr Museveni’s main challenger, Kizza Besigye, called a press conference last evening to complain about what he termed widespread malpractices in the elections.

Dr Besigye cited the massive deployment of security in different parts of the country and alleged corrupt activities involving people close to the president as part of the malpractices.

According to the results from 12,706 polling stations out of the total 23,968 countrywide, Mr Museveni, the ruling party’s presidential flagbearer, had 2,953,506 votes while Dr Besigye of the Interparty Cooperation (IPC) had 972,888 votes.

Uganda People’s Congress candidate (UPC) Olara Otunnu was third with 87,691 votes. But Mr Otunnu did not cast his vote, saying he did not want to participate in a flawed electoral process.

He was later reported threatening to mobilise supporters to reject the poll results.

Mr Nobert Mao, the Democratic Party (DP) candidate, had garnered 79,147 votes, followed by Abedi Bwanika (27,509 votes) and Beti Olive Kamya, the only female candidate, with 24,478 votes. Others were Samuel Lubega (19,934 votes) and Bidandi Sssali Jaberi (17,934 votes).

Some 13,954,129 people were registered to take part in the country’s second multiparty election in more than two decades with observers noting a high voter turnout of more than 70 per cent.

While the EC results did not offer a detailed indication of how the vote had played out per region, the provisional figures reflect the results separately tallied by Sunday Monitor from across the country’s 112 districts.

The government had deployed uncharacteristically high security forces across the country, ostensibly to forestall any violence, but which the opposition interpreted as a ploy to intimidate and scare their supporters from voting and give the incumbent an unfair advantage over them.