People across Uganda began voting in presidential elections with the incumbent, Yoweri Museveni seeking to extend his 30-year rule.
Presidential contenders held their final campaign rallies Tuesday, a day after opposition supporters clashed with police, leaving at least one person dead.
Key opposition candidate Kizza Besigye, a three-time loser who was briefly detained by police in Monday’s chaotic protests, said he was still confident of ending veteran President Yoweri Museveni’s three-decade grip on power in Thursday’s vote.
Previous elections
The first national election in Uganda was the Uganda National Assembly elections of 1962.
An alliance between the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and Kabaka Yekka (KY) won the majority of parliamentary seats, and formed Uganda’s first post-independence government with Obote as executive Prime Minister.
A period of dictatorship and political strife, including the tenures of Idi Amin, Yusuf Lule and Godfrey Binaisa, meant no elections were held until the presidential election of December 1980.
Obote was pronounced the winner amid bitter dispute and allegations of electoral fraud.
Yoweri Museveni, one of the presidential aspirants, declared an armed rebellion, and waged a guerrilla war (the Ugandan Bush War) against the government of Obote.
Museveni takes power
Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) took power in 1986 from the government of Gen. Tito Okello Lutwa who had six months earlier toppled Obote’s UPC government in a July 27, 1985 military coup, making him President.
Museveni and his National Resistance Movement (NRM) created a form of “no-party democracy”, banning political parties from fielding candidates directly in elections.
In the “no-party” presidential election in 1996, Museveni defeated Paul Ssemogerere and Mohamed Mayanja by a landslide.
Both losing candidates rejected the results although international and domestic observers described the vote as valid.
Besigye comes into picture
Museveni won by a substantial majority in 2001 presidential election, with Kizza Besigye as the only real challenger.
Despite a protest against the results, citing massive voter intimidation and rigging, the outcome was accepted by the Supreme Court of Uganda.
In the 2005 constitutional referendum, Ugandans voted to restore a multi-party political system, lifting the 19-year restriction on the activities of political parties.
The Ugandan general election of 2006 was the first multiparty election in 25 years.
Museveni won 59% of the presidential vote, and his party, the National Resistance Movement, won the majority of parliamentary seats.
In 2011 presidential elections, a total of eight candidates were running with Kizza Besigye and Yoweri Museveni facing each other for the third time after being formerly allies.
The electoral turnout was about 59 percent of the 14 million eligible voters.
In a first statement the chairman of Electoral Commission of Uganda, Badru Kiggundu, said that Museveni won with 68.38 percent of the votes and his main opponent Kizza Besigye got 26.01 percent. Norbert Mao came in third position having polled 147,708 votes.
The four-party Inter-Party Cooperation chairman Kizza Besigye said before the results were announced that the opposition “categorically rejects the outcome of the elections.”
Come 2016
Mr Museveni is hailed by many Ugandans for providing decades of relative peace and economic stability.
His rivals, however, are drawing strength from a clamour for fresh leadership.
2016 voting is scheduled to end at 4pm. Initial results are expected as early as Saturday afternoon, with the leading candidate requiring more than 50% of votes cast to avoid a second round run-off.
More than 15-million Ugandans are registered to vote, casting ballots in more than 28,000 polling stations for both a president and MPs, with 290 seats being contested by candidates from 29 political parties.
