My latest, with RFI colleagues interviewing.
About 21.7 million voters are called to vote for these 2026 general elections, according to Uganda’s Electoral Commission, which include presidential and parliamentary votes.
The campaign ended on Tuesday evening.
Power grab
Uganda's head of state Yoweri Museveni ended his campaign in the Kasese district, in the far west of the country, on Monday, with one of his final campaign rallies.
The 81-year-old incumbent president defended his record, particularly the political stability restored since he took power in 1986, after decades of political turmoil, before a crowd of several thousand people wearing the yellow colours of his National Resistance Movement (NRM).
“The NRM rejected ethnic or religious politics because they are sterile, they make no sense," he told the crowd. The NRM rejected sectarianism; that is why we created a strong national party and were able to build strong national institutions: the army, the police, the civil service, and others. It is thanks to this that we now have peace.”
His final campaign rally was held in Kampala on Tuesday. If he was reelected, he would serve his seventh mandate.
Fighting for political space
Facing Museveni are sept autres candidats, but the most visible is by far Bobi Wine, 43, real name Robert Kyagulanyi, leader of the National Unity Platform (NUP). He is running for the second time despite the fact that his difficult 2021 campaign and a campaign marred by police violence.
Rights groups and international monitors accuse Uganda's authorities of arrests of opponents and candidates, abductions, and media intimidation in the run-up to the polls.
Wine himself has been repeatedly arrested in the past, and campaigned in a flak jacket, saying the race has become a "war".
"They cannot abduct all of us," he said at a colourful rally for his NUP last week. "The jails are already full and we are still millions of change-seeking Ugandans out there."
Many see in Wine the last hope for a regime change, as entire generations have only known Museveni as President.
The historic opposition leader Kizza Besigye is still in prison after having been kidnapped in November 2024 while in Kenya. He endorsed Boni Wine over the weekend.
Amnesty International on Monday said that Ugandan security forces had used torture and arbitrary arrests to intimidate the opposition before the election. That included security officers beating and using tear gas against NUP supporters, the global rights monitor said.
Between fear and hopelessness
But Ugandans also clearly fear a repeat of the 2021 violence, where many people lost their lives.
“The army chief and the spokesperson issued warnings urging voters not to linger near polling stations after casting their ballots," Godber Tumushabe, of the Great Lakes Institute for Strategic Studies, told RFI. "And one particularly disturbing comment came from a senior officer in the army’s Fourth Division in Gulu: he warned that Ugandans who remained near polling stations after voting could be arrested… or shot.”
Concerns of a wider erosion of democracy in east Africa are high, after elections in neighbouring Tanzania in October descended into violence amid rigging allegations, with hundreds of protesters killed by security forces.
Dozens of anti-government protesters have also been killed in multiple protests in Kenya since 2024, with impunity.
“Museveni brandishes the slogan ‘protect the gains,’ but you don’t protect a military regime," human rights lawyer Tito Magoti told RFI. "I urge him to renounce force and violence: as the election approaches, the state wants to exclude citizens from governing their country. And this could end badly.”
In the last election in 2021, around 59 percent of registered voters cast a ballot, with about 10.7 million participating out of 18.1 million registered. Population growth and a booming young generation make voter engagement more unpredictable this year.
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Read also:
Crackdown on Uganda's opposition intensifies as elections draw near
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