The Ugandan Presidential Elections

It’s election time here in Uganda. In fact, many of my Ugandan friends have left to head to their home districts. Surprisingly few are going home to vote, but most are going home simply for safety reasons. Although everything has been unusually peaceful leading to these elections, Uganda has not undergone completely peaceful elections since they became independent in 1962. Granted, elections didn’t begin until 1980. The country has never switched power through elections, either. Every time power has changed hands, it has been through a military coup.

President Yoweri Museveni is in power at the moment and has been for 25 years. He came into power in 1986, and according to the constitution, he was only to remain in power for 2 terms. Yet he changed the Ugandan Constitution in 1996 to remove the term limit. Despite his corruption, many Ugandans, especially the older generation, are okay with Museveni staying in power, because they remember what the country was like under Milton Obote and Idi Amin. The younger generation, however, is ready for a change, for some fresh blood in power.

Nearly every Ugandan I’ve talked to says this election will be peaceful. In fact, many of my friends aren’t even voting. Museveni will once again take over.

“Why vote if it won’t even count?”

I am interested to see how these elections will play out, but I am pretty confident in who will be in power when it’s all said and done. I’ve asked many people if the Ugandan people are anywhere close to where the people in Tunisia and Egypt were a few weeks ago and still are. Most think their still a few years away, but come the election five years from now, who knows.

Is Uganda, then, really a democracy? If there are no free and fair elections, does freedom truly reign?

This is about as far as I go in politics. The simple understanding. But I will say that being here during this time has been very interesting and intriguing.