18.1 million Ugandan registered voters are poised to make the final decision on who will lead them from the ward level to the presidency in the next years.
According to the Daily Monitor, the country has 34,684 polling stations from which voters will select 528 new members of parliament and a president. The Ugandan media reported that the voting began at 7am and will end at 4pm; just two hours shy of sunset today.
The Ugandan election which has been dotted with drama, rampant arrests and police brutalisation comes in many shades. The presidential race has attracted 10 contestants who are challenging the incumbent President Yoweri Museveni- a man who has occupied the highest office for three decades.
NUP, which has sponsored the candidature of a pop-star turned legislator Robert Kyagulanyi alias Bobi Wine, is angling to dethrone NRM as the popular party in the country, aside from leapfrogging President Museveni.
In the race is a mixture of elder candidates led by the sitting president and FDC party flag bearer Patrick Oboi Amuriat against young candidates like Bobi Wine, 38, Nancy Kalemba and 24-year old John Katumba.
Even as the Ugandan Electoral Commission gets its hand on the deck to deliver a credible election, fears abound that the outcome may not be satisfying owing to the series of political events. Earlier in the week, the country’s communication authority ordered for the closure of social media sites and instant messaging applications citing need for surveillance.
In the same week, the US accused the East African country of foul play, after it emerged that the Ugandan authorities had not cleared a contingent of American election observers.
Fight for release
As Africa turns its eyes on the Ugandan poll, a group of 49 supporters of the NUP candidate Bobi Wine are fighting for their release. On Wednesday, the group moved to the High Court in Kampala where they accused the Museveni-led government of persecution, illegal detention and human rights violation.
“A declaration that the concurrent trial of the applicants (NUP supporters) before the Chief Magistrates Court of Masaka and the General Court Martial, Makindye, violates their rights guaranteed under the 1995 Constitution,” their petition read, as revealed by the Ugandan press.
They want to be released on grounds that they were illegally tried in two separate courts and unlawfully detained by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) and police.