Uganda’s main opposition weighs its options after defeat in elections

KAMPALA – Uganda’s main opposition party pondered options yesterday for contesting results of landmark elections that handed them a resounding loss and extended President Yoweri Museveni’s 20-year hold on power.

As Museveni and his wife, newly elected MP Janet, celebrated victories in Uganda’s first multi-party polls since 1980, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) leader Kizza Besigye huddled with aides a day after rejecting the results. Besigye, who has alleged massive vote fraud, claims the official returns released on Saturday by Uganda’s Electoral Commission were manipulated in Museveni’s favour and significantly different from the actual count.The FDC is pondering a court challenge to the results and expects to decide how to proceed after evaluating tallies from its own canvass of individual polling stations as well as a review of reported irregularities.”Our next course of action will be determined by the tallying and the information we get,” FDC spokeswoman Sarah Epenu told AFP.”We shall sit as a party and discuss the merits of our next course of action.”Besigye, 50, had mounted the strongest challenge yet to the 62-year-old Museveni’s rule but won just 37 per cent of the vote to the incumbent’s nearly 60 per cent, according to the official results.Besigye called the results “outrageous,” claiming the race was much closer with neither he nor Museveni reaching the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a second-round run-off.He described the Electoral Commission tabulation as “illegal” and the culmination of an “illegitimate process,” that saw him spend much of the campaign in court on pending criminal charges that Museveni backed.Immediately after the results were announced, clashes erupted in the capital as security forces fired live rounds and teargas to disperse angry opposition supporters as cheering pro-Museveni crowds paraded through the streets.Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) said the election was “free, fair and democratic” and called the results “credible.”The president has not yet made any comment on the polls or the opposition complaints but was expected to hold a news conference later Sunday at his ranch in western Uganda.NRM spokesman Ofwono Opondo told AFP, however, that the opposition was destined to lose any challenge to the results.- Nampa-AFPBesigye, who has alleged massive vote fraud, claims the official returns released on Saturday by Uganda’s Electoral Commission were manipulated in Museveni’s favour and significantly different from the actual count.The FDC is pondering a court challenge to the results and expects to decide how to proceed after evaluating tallies from its own canvass of individual polling stations as well as a review of reported irregularities.”Our next course of action will be determined by the tallying and the information we get,” FDC spokeswoman Sarah Epenu told AFP.”We shall sit as a party and discuss the merits of our next course of action.”Besigye, 50, had mounted the strongest challenge yet to the 62-year-old Museveni’s rule but won just 37 per cent of the vote to the incumbent’s nearly 60 per cent, according to the official results.Besigye called the results “outrageous,” claiming the race was much closer with neither he nor Museveni reaching the 50 per cent threshold needed to avoid a second-round run-off.He described the Electoral Commission tabulation as “illegal” and the culmination of an “illegitimate process,” that saw him spend much of the campaign in court on pending criminal charges that Museveni backed.Immediately after the results were announced, clashes erupted in the capital as security forces fired live rounds and teargas to disperse angry opposition supporters as cheering pro-Museveni crowds paraded through the streets.Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) said the election was “free, fair and democratic” and called the results “credible.”The president has not yet made any comment on the polls or the opposition complaints but was expected to hold a news conference later Sunday at his ranch in western Uganda.NRM spokesman Ofwono Opondo told AFP, however, that the opposition was destined to lose any challenge to the results.- Nampa-AFP