Post by Onyango Oloo on Feb 5, 2016 12:01:26 GMT 3
EXCERPT:
There are no prizes for predicting who wins Uganda's presidential election on 18 February. After 30 years in office and four victorious elections in the last 20 of them, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni knows every trick in the book. Yet he's still taking no chances. Using state funds, intimidating and outlawing the opposition, and mobilising violent 'youth' are all part of the presidential armoury. All this comes on top of his National Resistance Movement (NRM)'s overwhelming control of the electoral process and its unparalleled ability to mobilise the grassroots.
Museveni is further helped by a divided opposition that has split the vote between former Security Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi and opposition stalwart Kizza Besigye, of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Mbabazi defected to the opposition after being sacked as Prime Minister in September 2014. Having tried and failed to form an opposition coalition known as The Democratic Alliance for much of last year, Mbabazi and Besigye are now campaigning independently, separated by a gulf of mistrust and personal ambition (AC Vol 56 No 19, Opposition blues).
Some hope the two leading opposition figures may be able to unite for the second round if they can prevent Museveni from taking 50% of the vote in the first. A poll by Kampala-based Research World International, published on 20 January, suggested such an outcome is within reach. Conducted between 15 and 19 January in 89 of the 111 districts, it predicted Museveni would take 51%, followed by Besigye (32%) and Mbabazi (12%). It used an estimated five percentage point margin of error. Polling data in Uganda should be taken with a pinch of salt but the figures at least give an indication of the electoral order of battle. A percentage in the low 50s would be Museveni's poorest electoral performance yet and is consistent with a prolonged period of declining support since 1996. Years of tough economic conditions, endemic corruption, an increasingly restricted political environment and fading memories of the 1981-86 Bush War, have all undermined his support.
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www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/11476/How_the_next_election_will_be_won