Uganda’s opposition leader Bobi Wine has a filed a case at the Supreme Court seeking to have results of last month’s presidential election that saw Yoweri Museveni re-elected cancelled.
Lawyers representing Wine, real name Robert Kyagulanyi, made the announcement on Monday after the 38-year-old pop star rejected the poll results claiming his win had been stolen.
His lawyer George Musisi said the opposition MP wanted the apex court in Uganda to overturn the election results on grounds including widespread use of violence and voter tampering.
Museveni, who has led Uganda since orchestrating a coup in 1986, was the victor of the January 14 presidential election with 59 per cent of the total vote, while Wine garnered 35 per cent.
“We want the poll cancelled and repeated,” said Musisi.
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The National Unity Platform (NUP) lawyer claims there was ballot stuffing and widespread state intimidation during the tension-filled poll.
“There was outright ballot-stuffing, there was intimidation of NUP agents and supporters, some were arrested on the eve of the election, there was pre-ticking of ballots,” he said.
But Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) party says the petition will flop.
“Kyagulanyi is trying to give his supporters a soft landing but inside himself he knows he lost genuinely,” NRM spokesman Rogers Mulindwa said.
The youthful Wine used his pop star status due to his much-loved music to rally his fans behind his presidential bid and proved to be the most formidable challenge Museveni has faced so far.
The state responded to the NUP key figure’s packed presidential campaigns with ferocious crackdowns with his supporters and party officials being brutalized by merciless state agents.
Wine was barred from media interviews and holding rallies in various parts of the country ahead of the hotly contested election amid concerns raised by the international community.
The Supreme Court has dismissed the past four presidential petitions against Museveni’s controversial election wins with many of the opinion that the president controls the courts.