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President Museveni endorsed to run for another term

By Wangu Kanuri October 18th, 2022 2 min read

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has been endorsed to run for the presidency for yet another term.

Museveni, 78, was endorsed by Buganda region youth leaders led by Ibrahim Kitatta, as the National Resistance Movement’s sole candidate for the 2026 general election.

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President Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame in Kampala. PHOTO: COURTEST

President Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, has clocked 36 years as the Head of State, being the longest-serving East African president.

However, President Museveni has changed the Ugandan constitution twice to allow him to run for four decades.

Originally, the constitution allowed a president to run for office for two-five years, but Ugandan legislators, in 2005, removed the term limits allowing President Museveni to stay in office. +

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Ugandan politician Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as pop star Bobi Wine, speaks to people at Kibera slum in Nairobi on October 14, 2018. PHOTO | AFP

Again in 2017, Ugandan Parliament voted overwhelmingly to scrap an age limit of 75 years for presidential candidates, allowing President Museveni to be on the ballot for yet another time.

In the 2021 general election, Museveni was on the ballot facing his main competitor, Bobi Wine, born Robert Kyagulanyi.

Wine, a singer cum politician, contested rallying youths to join him in ‘removing a dictator.’

Wine even composed a song criticising the incumbent president, coupled with riots on Uganda’s streets on what he termed as oppression from the army sent by President Museveni on his supporters.

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Though he lost, Wine went to court to challenge Museveni’s win but withdrew the case saying that Uganda’s supreme court judges were biased in their judgment.

The National Unity Platform’s (NUP) party leader has since criticized President Museveni’s leadership skills and is very vocal on social media, exposing what he terms ‘ills’ perpetrated by the head of state.

Wine has not been the only challenger of President Museveni’s presidency.

Kizza Besigye has also unsuccessfully tried opposing the incumbent’s leadership. The leader of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) political party was on the ballot in 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016 but lost to President Museveni.

 

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