Uganda leader rejects opposition election plea: paper

KAMPALA, Monday

President Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's long-serving president, has dismissed an opposition call for electoral reform that would block him from standing for another term, a government-owned newspaper reported on Monday.

ritics accuse the former rebel leader, who has ruled Uganda since 1986, of trying to be president-for-life after parliament scrapped term restrictions. The ruling party is rumoured in local political and media circles to be seeking an end to Uganda's presidential age limit of 75.

Museveni, 64, is widely expected to stand for a third term in 2011 in a likely rematch with opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who was defeated in the last two multi-party polls.

"You talk of amending the electoral law. Amend it in order to achieve what?" Museveni said in a letter to an opposition party, according to the New Vision newspaper.

Opposition parties have called for re-instating term limits, and other reforms to help prevent rigging.

Museveni said Uganda had already introduced one ballot box, one ballot paper and announcing the election results immediately to reform voting.

"The only remaining point is computerising the voters' register in order to stop the opposition from engaging in multiple registration of voters," he said in a dispatch to the People's Progressive Party.

Since taking power in a bush war in the 1980s, Museveni has been widely praised for macroeconomic reforms, the stable economy, and poverty reduction. The economy is expected to grow 6 percent in 2009/10 from 7 percent in the previous year.

But critics, rights groups and some donors have lambasted him for human rights abuses, high-level graft and political repression.

Museveni remains popular with many older voters who remember the dark days under dictator Idi Amin.

But Museveni's share of votes, despite retaining a majority in past polls, has dwindled in the last two elections, and the opposition hopes to capitalise on high-level corruption scandals and cracks within his ruling party over the prospect of another term.

Museveni's National Resistance Movement ran Uganda as a one-party state until a referendum that brought back multi-party politics in 2005. (Reuters)