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On Thursday 14th of January, Ugandans came out to cast their votes to determine who their next president would be for the next five years until 2026. The presidential race had 11 candidates; 5 of the contesting candidates had political parties to which they were affiliated and were flag bearers, while the other 6 had no parties.
Candidates who were affiliated to political parties were; the Incumbent His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the president of the Republic of Uganda, who has led Uganda for the last 35 years and is Chairperson of the National Resistance Movement, Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu alias Bobi Wine, a popular singer and chairperson of the National Unity Platform, Engineer Patrick Oboi Amuriat of Forum for Democratic Change, General Mugisha Muntu Gregory, a retired military officer of Alliance National Transformation, Norbert Mao of Democratic Party.
Whereas the other 6 candidates in the race were on the independent ticket and these were; John Katumba, the youngest candidate in the race aged 24, Nancy Kalembe Linda, the only female candidate in the race; Fred Mwesigye, Joseph Kiiza Kabuleta, known by the majority as a pastor, General Henry Tumukunde who is a retired senior military officer and Willy Mayambala on the independent ticket and also the only disabled candidate in the race.
The national unity platform saw huge support from the central and eastern regions, with NRM harvesting large from the west, north, and West Nile.
The electoral commission started releasing results on14th, the day of voting, with the incumbent president Yoweri Kaguta Museveni being on top defeating his rivals. The electoral commission released the first set presidential electoral results on 14th at 2 pm with president Museveni being in the lead with 2,219,418 votes, Bobiwine had 941,068 votes. Patrick Oboi Amuriat of FDC had 118,310 votes, whereas the other candidates had less than a percentage point, and these were from 34.3% of the total 34,684 polling stations.
By law, the electoral commission is required to announce the winning candidate to the public within 48 hours towards the voting day's closure, and that is close to two days. The Chairman Electoral commission Justice Simon Byabakama announced Museveni winner in a landslide, with 58.64% of the vote, while opposition Wine received 34.83% of the vote. Turnout was relatively low -- just under 10 million people of the country's 18 million eligible voters cast a ballot.
On 16th Saturday at 8:00 pm the president-elect Yoweri Museveni addressed the nation live from his home in Rwakitura Kiruhura district where he talked about several issues, including improving agriculture to modern and commercial in both rural and urban areas of Uganda, providing complete free education to those who can’t afford school dues in both primary and secondary school, ensuring the availability of medicine in all government hospitals, increasing salaries for scientists, working on roads and many more issues. However, during the address, he hit back at the media channels that provided unauthentic information to the public, including Aljazeera and other international media channels.
“There is this useless channel called Aljazeera. These confused fellows of ours are the foreigners who are shallow; they are not serious they were analyzing there is a high turn up as you had in the BBC and these other Arab channel called Aljazeera, which is also a problem. Apparently, there is a high turn up in Uganda, which is likely to favor Bobiwine. They think youth is just biology they don’t know that youth is biology but also ideology. Now the youth have turned up in big numbers so those are the 6 million votes for Museveni; Bobiwine has got 3 million votes and something, so if the youth voted for Bobiwine, then how did Museveni get all these votes?
He continued, "Shallow! Shallow! Shallow! Not Serious! But also, indisciplined, why do you go to people’s affairs?"
What do you make of President-Elect Museveni's remarks?