Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is expected to win reelection in polls today that critics have called a sham.
The 81-year-old is aiming for a ninth term in office — including two unelected terms — and has “a genuine track record,” the Ugandan author Charles Onyango-Obbo wrote for Semafor: Since 1986, he has presided over an economic surge that has seen GDP increase 13-fold.
But he has also installed relatives in positions of power, and elections “follow a mystical arithmetic”: Elections have ended with Museveni taking more than 90% of the vote and ballots sometimes outnumber registered voters. Rivals, such as opposition leader Bobi Wine, have slammed Museveni’s repression: “Ugandans must not allow another stolen election,” he wrote in the Financial Times.
