Voting Deliberately Delayed Amid Internet Blackout In Uganda, Says Opposition
Voting Deliberately Delayed Amid Internet Blackout In Uganda, Says Opposition
At a polling station on the outskirts of Kampala, voting began four hours late after officials had to switch to manual verification.
Museveni acknowledged even he had trouble with the voting machines and promised to investigate.
“I put my right… thumbprint. The machine did not accept it. I put my left, and it did not accept it,” he told journalists, adding that the machine finally accepted a scan of his face, allowing him to vote.
Peace And Security’
As with Wine’s 2021 campaign, hundreds of his supporters were arrested in the run-up to the vote. He wore a flak jacket at rallies, describing the election as a “war” and Museveni as a “military dictator”.
Human Rights Watch has denounced this week’s suspension of 10 NGOs, including election monitors.
The government said the internet shutdown was needed to prevent the spread of “misinformation” and “incitement to violence”, but the United Nations called it “deeply worrying”.
The other major opposition figure, Kizza Besigye, who ran four times against Museveni, was abducted in Kenya in 2024 and brought back to a military court in Uganda for a treason trial that is ongoing.
Many Ugandans still praise Museveni as the man who ended the country’s post-independence chaos and oversaw rapid economic growth, even if much was lost to a relentless string of massive corruption scandals.
Peace and security in the country are very good. The party is well-organised,” said Angee Abraham Lincoln, 42, a Museveni supporter waiting to cast his vote in Kampala.
Western countries have often given Museveni leeway after he swallowed their demands for neoliberal reforms in the 1980s and made himself a useful partner in the US-led “war on terror” in the 2000s, especially through troop contributions to Somalia.
The president said his vote, when it was finally cast, was for anyone “who believes in Uganda… who believes in Africa.”
AFP
