Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is treating his country’s election later this month as a coronation, not a contest, happy to cultivate the impression that the five-year extension to his already 30-year rule is all but a done deal. But the arrest this past weekend of a prominent general turned regime critic is the latest sign that Museveni’s camp is more worried about the vote—and its aftermath—than they are letting on.
Ahead of the Feb. 18 ballot, Museveni has been running a goodwill tour of a campaign. Traveling from town to town under a banner of “Steady Progress,” he is pledging new schools and health centers and better roads, all while deflecting blame for any failings over the past three decades onto whichever target is at hand, especially voters who supported the opposition in previous elections.
When he’s even willing to acknowledge that his seven opponents in the presidential race exist, it’s usually to belittle them. Instead of simply noting his packed schedule and begging his way out of a live debate in mid-January, Museveni was quoted telling reporters, “This system of going into competition for speaking is for high school.”
Now, to the irritation of opposition supporters and the relief of a political structure built primarily on his largesse, he looks set to coast to a fifth term without any significant engagement around the problems dogging Uganda, including worrying inflation. And why not? It’s the same strategy that won him 68 percent of the ballots in 2011.
Except recent incidents belie Museveni’s posture of certain victory.
While the president may not be taking the competition seriously, leaders in his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party are, issuing a spate of threats to political opponents and their supporters. The most inflammatory came during a campaign event at the end of January, when the NRM’s secretary-general apparently told residents, “The state will kill your children if they come to disorganize and destabilize the peace and security.”
With the opportunity for the opposition to rally around one candidate, Museveni could go from invincible to vulnerable.
Against this backdrop, police officials say they have recruited 11 million “crime preventers”—a group they compare to a neighborhood watch force, enlisted to help the police stem criminal activity. That’s not how everyone sees them, though. International and local human rights groups have warned that the crime preventers appear to be linked to the NRM and have “acted in partisan ways and carried out brutal assaults and extortion with no accountability.”
Even foreign diplomats have come in for some chiding recently. Ofwono Opondo, a government spokesperson, said in a press statement that the “government does not therefore expect particularly members of the diplomatic missions here to unduly meddle in our internal politics and elections as some of them are already doing.”
Threats gave way to action on Sunday, when military forces detained one of Museveni’s most outspoken critics, Gen. David Sejusa. The former intelligence chief fled the country in 2013 after accusing Museveni of orchestrating a plot to install his son in power, but returned the next year. Since his homecoming, he has refused to tamp down his criticism of the regime. In Uganda, active military personnel are not allowed to participate in electoral politics—the military is given seats in parliament, instead—and Sejusa now appears likely to face a court martial.
What’s suddenly got the Museveni camp so worried?
Despite Opondo’s criticism, it isn’t really the international community. Though Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza have suffered criticism of late for trying to extend their stays in office, Museveni hashistorically gotten a pass. The West, which has come to rely on him for his prowess as East Africa’s powerbroker and his willingness to contribute troops to resolve regional conflicts, has been happy to forgive him more than they have his counterparts.
And it doesn’t seem like the opposition should worry Museveni, either. While the vote counts have been disputed, Museveni has defeated his main opponent, the Forum for Democratic Change’s Kizza Besigye, in each of the past three elections. Besigye actually dropped out of electoral politics in 2013, calling it a “ritual without any political significance.” But he joined back in last year to lead a “defiance campaign,” which is as much about pointing out faults in the electoral system as it is about winning the race.
For the first time, Museveni is also facing a second significant challenger, his former prime minister, Amama Mbabazi. The two had a very public falling out in 2014—rumored to be over Mbabazi’s presidential ambitions—which paved the way for the former protégé to openly challenge his mentor. But following a career inside the NRM structure, it’s unclear whether his candidacy—or Besigye’s, for that matter—offers voters much of a change from the status quo.
Combined, though, Besigye and Mbabazi appear to have the potential to siphon enough votes away from Museveni to force a runoff. To take a Ugandan presidential race in the first round, a candidate must win the majority of all votes cast. Otherwise the top two finishers compete in a second round. A new poll out from Research World International (RWI) shows Museveni with 51 percent of the vote. He’s still outpacing his opponents: Besigye is at 32 percent and Mbabazi at 12. But if the poll is accurate—a big if, in the Ugandan setting—he’s teetering dangerously close to a runoff.
Suddenly, with the opportunity for the opposition to rally around one candidate, Museveni could go from invincible to vulnerable. Which goes a long way toward explaining why his supporters are suddenly so anxious.
But that’s not his regime’s only worry. The opposition—and Besigye, especially—may be just as happy to lose the vote. There’s already a widespread expectation among the public that the upcoming ballot is not going to be free and fair. According to the same RWI poll, only 40 percent of people think it will be. Besigye could capitalize on public anger over disputed electoral returns to form a broader social movement against the government, ensuring Museveni a five-year headache.
The NRM leadership is well aware of this possibility, because Besigye has done it before. After the 2011 poll, Besigye galvanized the country with a “Walk to Work” movement protesting rising fuel and food prices.
That helps explain why Opondo announced he is aware of opposition plans to “mobilize and pour youths on the roads” after the vote “to demand immediate employment from the government.” He warned that this could spark a chain of violence across Uganda.
True or not, Museveni’s administration can now hold the threat in reserve, not only to justify any further crackdowns on the current path to another Museveni coronation, but also to keep the opposition in check when he is almost inevitably enshrined.
Andrew Green is a foreign correspondent based in East Africa. He writes often from the region on issues of health, human rights and politics, and his work has appeared in Foreign Policy, The New Republic and The Washington Post, among other outlets. You can view more of his reporting at www.theandrewgreen.com.