Change of Tactics

Uganda: What’s next after opposition leader Bobi Wine withdraws election challenge?

By Musinguzi Blanshe

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Posted on February 26, 2021 18:56

Ugandan opposition leader and singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, known as Bobi Wine addresses a news conference in Kampala © Ugandan opposition leader and singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, known as Bobi Wine addresses a news conference in Kampala, Uganda 26 January 2021. REUTERS/Abubaker Lubowa
Ugandan opposition leader and singer Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, known as Bobi Wine addresses a news conference in Kampala, Uganda 26 January 2021. REUTERS/Abubaker Lubowa

On Monday, Uganda’s Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine said he instructed his lawyers to withdraw a litigation he had filed challenging last month’s election won by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, who has been in power for 35 years. So what is next for the opposition leader?

Claiming that the Supreme Court was in Museveni’s pocket, Kyagulanyi said: “We are taking the case to the Court of the People”.

Kyagulanyi’s lawyers were a day late in filing affidavits in support of his case, so the court rejected them. That – and the fact that judges refused to recuse themselves due to their ties to the ruling National Resistance Movement – led him to judge that the court was unlikely to give him the hearing he felt he deserved.

He and his allies were claiming that the nationwide 14 January vote was plagued with ballot stuffing and voter intimidation. Activists pointed out anomalies, like 409 polling stations where everyone who was registered voted.

The electoral commission declared Museveni the winner with 58.6% of the vote compared to Kyagulanyi’s 34.8%, and the oppositionist accused the Supreme Court’s judges of “unprecedented bias, partiality and double

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