Can Bobi Wine topple Museveni?
KAMPALA: As far as campaign songs go, Bobi Wine’s hits all the right notes—an infectious, joyous message of hope reborn and national unity ascendant, interwoven with campaign pledges set to a rollicking, gospel infused reggae beat.
Accompanied by a slickly produced music video featuring some of the nation’s most popular musicians, Uganda’s pop-star turned presidential candidate promises an end to dictatorship, to discrimination, to corruption, to dysfunctional hospitals and to maternal mortality. But the likelihood of the 38-year-old getting to make his promises a reality appears slim, as voters go to the polls on January 14 in an election plagued by repression, voter intimidation and violence.
Wine, whose real name is Robert Kyagulanyi, is one of 10 candidates challenging 76-year-old President Yoweri Museveni, a former general who has been in power since 1986 and who has no intention of stepping down any time soon. He lobbied to lift the constitutionally-mandated age limit for the presidency just as he was about to surpass it, ensuring a continued grip on power. Now that he has the right to run again, Museveni and his ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, are determined that he will win at any cost.
That determination has played out in increasingly bloody ways. Police crackdowns on opposition rallies over the past several months have left scores dead. Opposition candidates and their supporters have faced ongoing intimidation campaigns, including threats to their families. In mid-November, Wine and fellow candidate Patrick Oboi Amuriat were arrested on charges of flouting COVID-19 regulations, sparking country-wide protests that saw at least 54 people killed. Since then, both foreign media and election monitoring organisations have been kicked out of the country, while civil society organisations have seen their bank accounts frozen under opaque allegations of anti-government activities.
The pressure on Wine, by far the best known of Museveni’s rivals, has intensified as the election drew closer. On January 7, police swarmed his vehicle as he was giving an online press conference, firing tear gas and shooting in the air as they dragged him from the car. Wine had been discussing his petition to the International Criminal Court to investigate alleged abuses by security forces in the run up to Uganda’s election. He was eventually released. Wine tweeted on Tuesday that soldiers had raided his Kampala home, arresting his security guards and killing a driver. The police deny the allegations. Later that day the streets of Kampala filled with military vehicles and personnel, some of whom were captured on video assaulting Wine’s supporters.
Wine has been a thorn in Museveni’s side ever since he transitioned from a hip-hop star to a social activist calling for better leadership and more opportunities for Uganda’s youth. In 2017 he won a seat in Parliament, where he started agitating for a change in leadership. The greater Wine’s popular appeal grew, the more Museveni disparaged him. In a recent interview, he insinuated that Wine was supported by the West to promote homosexuality, a potent dog whistle in a country where homophobia is still deeply entrenched, and where homosexuality is widely seen as a foreign import. “He gets quite a lot of encouragement from foreigners and homosexuals,” Museveni said in the interview. “Homosexuals are very happy with Bobi Wine. I think they even send him support.”
Disinformation has also spread online. On January 11, Facebook shut down the accounts of several Ugandan government officials linked to the ministry of information and communications technology, accusing them of manipulative messaging. “They used fake and duplicate accounts to manage pages, comment on other people’s content, impersonate users, re-share posts in groups to make them appear more popular that they were,” Facebook’s head of communication for sub-Saharan Africa, Kezia Anim-Addo, told AFP. “Given the impending election in Uganda, we moved quickly to investigate and take down this network.”
A day later, the government blocked access to social media platforms country wide. Museveni defended the shutdown in a televised address, saying it was in response to the Facebook ban, and insisting that he would not tolerate the “arrogance” of social media companies deciding “who is good and who is bad” in Uganda.
“This time, Museveni is scared,” says a resident expert on Ugandan politics who is currently working with the European Union on Uganda’s election, and who asked not to be named given the sensitivity of speaking out at the moment. Past elections, while marred by accusations of intimidation, bias and corruption, were never so bad that journalists were kicked out or civil society organisations prevented from operating.
While a recent Afrobarometer poll shows Museveni in a clear lead ahead of Wine, with 50% of voters compared to Wine’s 19%, it’s not enough to ensure that the election won’t go to runoff — an eventuality that experts say Museveni can’t afford. Ugandans appear to be resigned to such an outcome as well. A late 2020 Gallup poll showed that a majority (62%) said they did not have confidence in the honesty of their country’s elections, while confidence in their national government slipped from 48% in October to 36% by the end of November. (TIME)