Ugandans flooded polling stations on Thursday to cast ballots in landmark elections dominated by a bitter battle between President Yoweri Museveni and opposition leader Kizza Besigye.
Hundreds queued patiently, and not so patiently, in huge lines at many of the nearly 20 000 open-air voting centres organised for the nation’s first multi-party elections in 26 years, Agence France-Presse correspondents said.
Some voters complained of logistical hitches and delays but the process appeared to be progressing peacefully under the watchful eyes of security forces that were been deployed in massive numbers amid fears of violence.
By midday, some in the capital said they had been waiting four to five hours due to confusion over where they were supposed to vote and the large numbers, while polling was disrupted in the north by heavy rains.
”Since 1980 we have been voting over there, now they tell us we have to come here,” bemoaned Christopher Ssekabira (58) pointing to a distant school from a church in northern Kampala where he and about 50 others had been redirected.
”We were bounced from one station to another because of a mix-up in the registers and the stations were not properly marked,” said Annette Buyonda (38) as she waited in line in western Kampala.
But authorities said that with the exception of one northern constituency, where the parliamentary poll was cancelled outright because one candidate’s name was missing from the ballot, voting was running smoothly.
”So far, so good,” said electoral commission secretary Sam Rwakoojo.
Polls were to close at 5pm (2pm GMT) with results due on Saturday, according to authorities who have vowed a free and fair election despite opposition charges of intimidation in the tension-fraught campaign and fears of fraud.
About 10,4-million Ugandans are eligible to vote for one of five presidential candidates and the 310-seat Parliament but the campaign has been overshadowed by animosity between the main contenders for the top job.
Although Museveni is widely expected to win and extend his 20-year hold on power with a new five-year mandate, the spirited challenge from Besigye, his former personal physician and friend, has riveted this country of 26-million.
Casting his ballot in his hometime of Rukungiri in western Uganda, Besigye protested what he said was a ”very major” problem with several ballot boxes left unsealed and warned it was a sign of potential vote rigging.
”We are going to be discussing how to deal with this,” he told reporters.
Museveni was due to vote later at his home of Rwakitura, also in western Uganda.
The contest is a re-match of the last election in 2001, when the arch-rivals ran as individuals rather than on party slates, and Museveni won with nearly 70% of the vote.
Besigye alleged massive fraud, unsuccessfully sought to annul the results and then fled into exile after Museveni accused him of trying to foment a coup.
He returned only in October to be arrested three weeks later and currently faces rape and treason charges that could disqualify him from a run-off should Museveni fail to get the 50% of the vote needed to avoid a second round.
In the past five years, though, Besigye’s popularity has soared while Museveni’s once-sterling democratic credentials have been tarnished by alleged backsliding on reform and an ongoing brutal insurgency in the north.
Last year, Museveni repealed term limits that would have barred him from standing again, a move that sparked concern from donors along with his backing for Besgigye’s prosecution on charges widely seen as political.
Independent polls suggest the president is close to the 50% threshold although his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) predicts a landslide with Museveni winning at least 70%.
But Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) says its candidate has at least enough votes to force a run-off and claims the NRM prediction can only be reached through massive fraud. – Sapa-AFP