How Yoweri Museveni defeated Bobi Wine by a wide margin

For supporters of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, his resounding victory within the just-concluded election is a vindication of his 40-year-long rule.

He gained with 72% of the vote, near his highest-ever tally of 74% in Uganda’s first direct presidential election in 1996.

It reinforces the 81-year-old’s declare that he nonetheless instructions the help of the overwhelming majority of Ugandans, after seizing energy as a insurgent commander in 1986 ending the rule of the Milton Obote regime.

However Museveni’s important election rival – the charismatic former pop star Bobi Wine – dismissed the consequence as “faux” and stated he had gone into hiding following a raid on his house by the safety forces.

Museveni campaigned largely on his track-record, arguing that he has delivered political and financial stability in an period of world uncertainty.

He pledged to steer Uganda in direction of attaining the standing of a middle-income nation by 2030, a milestone his supporters have framed as a becoming legacy for a person who will end his seventh – and presumably remaining – time period the next yr.

Museveni sees Uganda’s nascent oil business as a central pillar in direction of attaining that aim.

On the marketing campaign path, he repeatedly instructed voters that when exports start, the economic system would develop at double-digit charges.

Museveni has set October because the goal date for the primary crude oil exports, through a 1,443 km pipeline to the Indian Ocean port of Tanga in Tanzania.

Regardless of his age, the president has sought to challenge vitality and management. At one among his remaining marketing campaign rallies, he instructed supporters that he had visited all of Uganda’s greater than 140 electoral constituencies.

But in early October, his group abruptly cancelled a number of marketing campaign occasions, citing unspecified “state duties” – an evidence many discovered unconvincing, fuelling hypothesis in regards to the octogenarian’s well being.

Subsequent pauses in his schedule solely deepened hypothesis about fatigue and declining well being.

For Wine, the consequence was an enormous blow. His share of the vote slumped from 35% in 2021 to 25% this time spherical, regardless of Uganda’s overwhelmingly younger inhabitants – a demographic lengthy considered because the 43-year-old pure base.

From Wine’s perspective, the election was neither credible nor official.

He maintains that the marketing campaign was removed from free and honest, pointing to repeated disruptions of his rallies by safety forces, together with the usage of tear fuel and reside ammunition to intimidate supporters, a few of whom have been killed.

He additionally alleged poll stuffing however has not supplied any proof to again his claims. The authorities haven’t commented on the claims.

After two unsuccessful presidential bids, questions now grasp over his political future.

There’s a rising threat that he might observe the trail of many opposition figures throughout Africa – politicians whose well-liked enchantment was steadily eroded by sustained repression, leaving them completely excluded from energy.

Throughout the marketing campaign, Wine embodied the vitality and impatience of Uganda’s youth, whereas Museveni solid himself because the seasoned patriarch, the guarantor of stability.

Finally, in accordance with the disputed official outcomes, voters opted for the latter.

These in search of to know Uganda’s subsequent chapter have largely targeted on the query of presidential succession – when and the way Museveni will finally exit the stage.

Ugandan journalist and political analyst Allan Kasujja – a former BBC Newsday radio and podcast presenter – cautions in opposition to being fixated with the difficulty.

“Change in Uganda, particularly political change, doesn’t, and nearly definitely is not going to, occur abruptly,” Kasujja says.

“It occurs regularly, and that course of has been beneath method for a while.”

Considered via that lens, the election seems much less a second of transformation than a ritual of the political calendar, one which legitimises deeper, slower shifts happening inside the ruling occasion, the Nationwide Resistance Motion (NRM), and the state equipment that it controls.

These shifts have been first seen throughout a cupboard reshuffle by Museveni in March 2023, and have become unmistakable within the August 2025 elections for the NRM’s high decision-making physique, the Central Govt Committee.

Removed from being a routine inner contest, the method was a high-stakes battle over positioning in a post-Museveni order.

Marked by factional bargaining and allegations of widespread bribery, the elections revealed a regime more and more pushed by succession politics moderately than competitors with an opposition that had both been handled by the safety forces or co-opted.

It supplied the clearest indication but of the rising affect inside the ruling occasion of military chief Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba – the son of the president and his potential successor.

Veteran figures from the occasion’s previous guard have been pushed apart, changed by newer faces, many with out the credentials of getting fought within the conflict that introduced Museveni to energy 40 years in the past, however broadly seen as loyal to his son.

Based on sources near the presidency, authority at State Home has grow to be more and more decentralised, with choices as soon as taken immediately by Museveni now channelled via a good internal family and long-time associates.

Museveni’s day-to-day schedule is alleged to be overseen by his eldest daughter, Natasha Karugire.

Relations with international dignitaries and senior army figures are largely managed by his half-brother, Salim Saleh, whereas commerce and financial coverage are formed by his son-in-law, Odrek Rwabwogo, married to Museveni’s second daughter, Endurance.

And for the primary time within the nation’s fashionable historical past, all safety issues – each inner and exterior – are overseen by the chief of defence forces, the 51-year-old Gen Kainerugaba.

Given the dominant position that the army has lengthy performed in Ugandan politics and the truth that Museveni himself got here to energy via armed battle, this focus of authority in his arms has profound political implications.

It means that Uganda’s future is being formed – and more and more managed – by Museveni’s son, even when he doesn’t maintain the title of head of state, but.