Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s 30-year grip on power looks set to continue, as the country’s election commission declared him the winner Saturday, with nearly twice as many votes as his closest competitor, opposition leader Kizza Besigye.
Preliminary figures showed the incumbent with 62% compared to 34% for Besigye. But Museveni’s party, the Federal Democratic Party of Uganda, or FDP, rejected the results and demanded independent audit of elections.
Besigye is under house arrest, with no one is allowed in or out to see him.
Elections officials are scheduled to announce the results Saturday.
With more than half the votes counted, unofficial results showed the incumbent with 62%, according to the election commission’s website.
More than 60 percent of the vote
Museveni’s closest competitor, Besigye, had 35.3%, the commission said. The country had a voter turnout of 63%, according to the panel.
As the nation awaited the official results, Besigye’s arrest and the deaths of two people at his opposition campaign office added to the tension Saturday.
Besigye was put under “preventative arrest” Friday at his home in Kampala, along with six officials from his party, police said.
Authorities detained the officials because they planned to announce unauthorized results tallied by the opposition, police spokesman Patrick Onyango said.
Under law, only election officials may announce results, he said.
The offices of the opposition party, where two people died following violence, had been besieged by police and military forces, the Red Cross said.
Incumbent in power since 1986
Museveni, 71, has been in office since his rebel group seized power in 1986. In 2005, the constitution was changed to allow him to extend his time in office.
As he tries to maintain his grip on power, experts emphasized the difficulty of unseating incumbents in Africa.
“A re-election for Museveni would signal the persistent advantages incumbents have in controlling the political process, making it very difficult for opposition parties or candidates to compete with national structures, finance and support from partisan government institutions,” said Magnus Taylor, an analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Besigye, 59, is one of eight candidates running for President this year. He is also Museveni’s former doctor and served as a minister in his Cabinet.
This is not Besigye’s first attempt to unseat his former boss. He lost presidential bids in 2001, 2006 and 2011.