Uganda election violence: Bobi Wine ally arrested

Police on Thursday detained a key ally of opposition figure Bobi Wine, accusing him of participating in bouts of violence in a remote part of central Uganda during last week's election.

Muwanga Kivumbi, a lawmaker who is a deputy president of Wine's National Unity Platform party, is likely to face criminal charges for his alleged role in violence in his constituency that left seven people dead, said police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke.

Those seven people were killed by unidentified security personnel who fired at Kivumbi's house in Butambala. Kivumbi spoke tearfully at the funerals of those killed, saying they were all victims of violence perpetrated by the armed forces.

Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, says he is in hiding after President Yoweri Museveni, who has held power since 1986, was declared the winner of Thursday's presidential election.

Museveni took 71.6% of the vote while Wine, his closest challenger, took 24.7%, according to official results that Wine rejected as fake.

In a televised speech on Sunday, Museveni accused the opposition of trying to foment violence during voting, saying those killed in Butambala had attacked the police with machetes. He urged religious leaders to reach out to young people who, he said, are likely to be misled into violence.

Rusoke, the police spokesman, said Wine was not a wanted man and that he knew of no attempt to harm him.

“We protected Bobi Wine through the entire election,” he said. “Why would he be unsafe after the end of the election? Logically there is no locus.”

Against Wine “there is no accusation,” he added.

But some of the 21 suspects taken into custody over electoral violence in Butambala had pointed a finger at Kivumbi, who lost his bid to keep his seat in Parliament, Kituuma said.

“There were running battles between police and his supporters,” he said.

Uganda’s election was marred by a dayslong internet shutdown and the failure of biometric voter identification machines that caused delays in the start of voting in areas including Kampala, the capital. Wine has also alleged that ballot boxes were stuffed in some areas seen as Museveni’s strongholds.

The security forces were a constant presence throughout the campaign. Wine said that authorities followed him and harassed his supporters, often using tear gas against them. He campaigned in a flak jacket and helmet because of security fears.

Museveni, 81, will now serve a seventh five-year term that would bring him closer to five decades in power.

His supporters credit him for the relative peace and stability that makes Uganda home to hundreds of thousands fleeing violence elsewhere in the region. But he hasn’t said when he will retire, and he has no rivals in the upper ranks of his party, known as the National Resistance Movement.

Uganda hasn’t witnessed a peaceful transfer of presidential power since independence from British colonial rule six decades ago.