Uganda’s outgoing President, Yoweri Museveni, won the presidential elections held on Thursday with 58.64% of the votes, according to the results announced on Saturday by the Electoral Commission.
In second place, the candidate of the National Unity Platform (NUP) and popular opposition leader, Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as Bobi Wine, obtained 34.83 percent of the votes, reports EFE news agency.
According to the results announced by the Electoral Commission, Bobi Wine won in the urban areas in central Uganda, near Kampala, and Museveni won the majority of the votes in the rural areas.
Bobi Wine was quick to reject the results, Friday, even before their proclamation by the Electoral Commission, considering them to be the results of the “worst electoral fraud in the country’s history”.
Museveni, 76, in power since 1986 and leader of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), was seeking his sixth re-election in these elections and won with this victory over ten other candidates.
The vote took place on January 14 in a calm but intimidating atmosphere, with the streets of Kampala, the capital, and surrounding areas guarded by armored vehicles. Few observers were present and internet access was blocked throughout the country.
At a press conference Friday morning, Wine insisted that the Ugandans had voted “massively to change a dictatorship into a democracy” and that he would fight for “the will of the people” through all possible legal means, including protest.
For his part, the president of the Electoral Commission, Simon Byabakama, rejected Wine’s accusations of fraud and asked him to show evidence, to which the opponent replied that he would do so when the internet was re-established.
According to EFE, as Wine was scheduled to address the journalists for the second time Friday to explain his upcoming initiatives, dozens of military personnel surrounded his house and the press and members of his party have been prevented from accessing his house after a second attempt to make public statements.
Wine is not under arrest, Ugandan police spokesman Fred Enanga told Efe, and the military guarding his house are there “for the candidate’s own safety”.