Lobby: Uganda presidential election results is a manufactured fiction

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni waves at supporters as he leaves after casting his ballot in Rwakitura on January 15, 2026 during Uganda's 2026 general elections. [AFP] A human rights lobby has rejected the outcome of Uganda's presidential election results, describing it as a manufactured fiction produced through what it termed a centralised, militarised process designed to entrench President Yoweri Museveni's rule. Speaking in Nairobi, the Pan-African Solidarity Network, alongside a coalition of civil society leaders, accused the Ugandan state of orchestrating what they called an electoral coup, stating that the announced results have no relationship to the will of Ugandan voters. "What occurred four days ago was not an election, it was a premeditated power grab and a military coup against the sovereignty of the Ugandan people, superintended for the benefit of Yoweri Museveni, who grabbed power by the gun and so despises democracy that he once famously stated that he cannot be removed by a mere piece of paper," said Manase Ahmed, reading from a joint statement. The group dismissed the officially announced 71.61 per cent victory margin as an algorithmic fiction, arguing that the outcome was predetermined long before ballots were cast. Manase said the results were the product of centralised forgery, doctored using an impossible voter register. According to the coalition, Uganda's Electoral Commission inflated the voter register to 21.6 million voters, a figure they said conveniently aligned with claims by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) that it had more than 20 million members. "By this claim, the NRM membership register grew by over 100% from the 8 million members that were known as of the 2021 elections. This kind of growth is not only statistically impossible but also grossly fraudulent. Independent audits by civil society groups and political parties confirm that the electoral commission register is poisoned with duplicates, with some people appearing over 50 times, to match up with the NRM register fraud. In other cases, biodata of deceased persons, minors, and ghosts, people totally unknown, were identified, " she said. She stated that the ruling regime had a preset target allegedly derived from Museveni's own past claims that millions of votes had been stolen from him in the 2021 election. "In 2021, Museveni said he was robbed of votes, first one million, then later 2.7 million. If you compare the margins between the 2021 and 2026 results, the difference is exactly 2.7 million votes. This can only be possible through a predetermined algorithm," said Manase. The lobby cited months of threats from senior regime figures, including social media posts by General Muhoozi Kainerugaba and rhetoric from members of the Patriotic League of Uganda, as evidence that the outcome was decided in advance. Irene Soila of the Kenya Human Rights Commission said totalitarian tactics were deployed on election day and in the days surrounding it. She accused the Ugandan government of engineering a nationwide internet shutdown to facilitate industrial-scale ballot stuffing and violent repression. She alleged that opposition agents were systematically chased away from polling stations or abducted to prevent them from observing the tallying process. According to the coalition, declaration of results forms were forcibly seized by security operatives, undermining any credible verification. Soila also accused security forces of intimidating voters in districts such as Mityana and Butambala, while opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, was placed under house arrest. The coalition further accused the Ugandan military of crossing from a security role into active criminal interference. "This was not an election. It was a military operation designed to bypass biometric verification systems and announce results that bore no resemblance to what was declared at polling stations," Soila said. She said the election was stained with blood, alleging that nearly 50 people had been killed in election-related violence, including 10 during a January 16 raid in Butambala. Cornelius Oduor, Deputy Executive Director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, criticised regional and continental bodies, accusing them of complicity through silence or premature endorsements. "To the African Union Commission, your statement congratulating Yoweri Museveni is a profound betrayal of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance. You have effectively endorsed a crime scene as a democratic exercise," said Oduor. He similarly faulted the East African Community Election Observation Mission, calling its preliminary report a sanitised whitewashing of a military occupation. Cyprian Nyamwamu of Kenya Bora Tuitakayo demanded the immediate release of all political prisoners, the reinstatement of suspended NGOs, and an end to harassment of the media and civil society in Uganda. "We demand the immediate retraction of all the illegal suspensions of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO), tens of them actually, targeted by the NGO Bureau in Uganda. The weaponisation of regulatory bodies to decapitate civil society oversight must end now. We also demand an immediate halt to the harassment, surveillance, and intimidation of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), activists, the media, and the political opposition. The press must be allowed to report without the threat of closure or physical violence," said Nyamwamu.

Lobby: Uganda presidential election results is a manufactured fiction

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