Uganda poll new ugly chapter in Africa's democratic experiment

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni addressing the media after casting his vote at a polling station during the presidential elections in Kirihura in western Uganda, February 18, 2016. [Boniface Okendo, Standard]

History just repeated itself in the presidential elections of January 15, 2026, in Uganda. Everything from a build-up dominated by the arrest and harassment of opposition figures and, sometimes, rights defenders to a polling-and-tallying process cloaked in the murk of an internet blackout lived up to expectations.

And the incumbent, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, 81, of the National Resistance Movement party in power since 1986, and gunning for a controversial, ‘peculiarly African’ seventh term in office, won with about 70 per cent of the vote.