KAMPALA (Reuters) – Uganda’s veteran President Yoweri Museveni held a commanding lead in early election results released on Friday, while his main challenger Bobi Wine’s party said its leader was effectively under house arrest.
Museveni, 81, has ruled Uganda since taking power in 1986 and is seeking a decisive victory to assert his political strength as speculation grows about his eventual successor.
Thursday’s voting results released by the Electoral Commission showed that Museveni received 76.25% of the vote, based on statistics from nearly half of the polling stations. Wine trailed with 19.85% of the vote, with the remaining votes divided among the six other candidates.
Museveni told reporters after the vote that he expected to win with 80 percent of the vote “if there was no cheating.”
The pop star-turned-politician Wine has alleged massive fraud during the election, which was held amid an internet outage following a violent campaign.
Wine, whose legal name is Robert Kyagulanyi, called on his supporters to protest on Thursday, although there have been no signs of demonstrations so far.
His National Unity Platform (NUP) party wrote on its X account on Thursday night that army and police surrounded Wine’s house in the capital Kampala, “effectively placing him under house arrest”.
Police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke told Reuters he was not aware Wine was under house arrest.
Security forces confined Wine to his home for several days after the last election in 2021, when he received 35% of the vote. The United States said the election was neither free nor fair, a charge that Ugandan authorities deny.
The U.N. human rights office said last week that this year’s elections were held amid “widespread repression and intimidation.”
Security forces repeatedly fired at Wine’s rallies, killing at least one person and arresting hundreds of his supporters. The government says it is responding to wrongdoing.
A win for Museveni would give the former rebel leader a seventh term in office. He is widely believed to have backed his son, military chief Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as his successor, although he has denied grooming Kainerugaba for the position.
(Writing by Vincent Mumo Nzilani and Alexander Wenning; Editing by Aaron Ross, Alexandra Hudson)
