Article By:

The Justice Minister of Uganda, Nobert Mao, had promised a quiet 2026 elections - the quietest ever. Few believed him but the start of the elections fleetingly seemed to vindicate him. Sections of the Ugandan media briefly called the presidential race mainly between 81-year-old Museveni and 43-year-old Bobi Wine as boring. Ugandans are not used to peaceful presidential elections. All elections under the 1995 Ugandan Constitution have been chaotic with the Supreme Court acknowledging massive election irregularities in 2001, 2006 and 2016 but falling short of annulling them due to the fear of grave consequences and reasoning that the massive electoral rigging was not substantial enough to subvert the will of the people. 

The substantiality of electoral irregularities, though is not a constitutional benchmark. The Constitutional promise to Ugandans, to whom all power belongs constitutionally speaking, is that of free, fair and regular elections. The inability of the courts to punish electoral rigging of presidential elections in Uganda rules out the courts as a useful remedy to presidential elections. Ugandans are legally speaking on their own when it comes to any irregularities in a presidential race. The courts are Museveni’s tools. 

There is a fervent desire among Uganda’s young population to change the leadership and end President Museveni’s more than 40-year-grip on Uganda but it faces a gun problem. The military is Museveni’s military. The Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) is Museveni’s son. He is a sworn enemy of Museveni’s political rivals and has publicly promised to harm both Besigye and Bobi Wine. He wants the former hanged while has threated to beat up Bobi in some of his tweets on X (formerly twitter). He boasted of torturing Eddie Mutwe, part of Bobi Wine’s security team, from his basement (torture chamber) and defied the release order by the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC). 

Eddie Mutwe, arrested on April 27, 2025, and tortured in incommunicado military detention, is still in detention contrary to Ugandan law that forbids trial and detention of torture victims. Eddie is part of an ever-growing list of dissidents Museveni’s military dictatorship has arrested, tortured and kept away from the 2026 general elections. For all the threats, detentions and beatings, the primary opposition to President Museveni is facing in this race, google data collected by veteran journalist Kalyegera shows that the Ugandan public is more interested in Bobi Wine than Museveni and other candidates across Uganda’s major towns and regions. If this interest were to translate into votes, Bobi would easily win. Still, a person who hopes to win a presidential race in current Uganda must overcome a hostile military terrain. 

The Ugandan military is increasingly vocal in Ugandan politics. They are monitoring rallies of the major presidential candidates and disrupting some. Why disperse crowds or rallies? Crowds matter in political contests. They showcase and mobilise support. They show and trigger momentum. Bobi Wine appears to have bigger and organic crowds than any other candidate. Museveni has mostly hired (facilitated) crowds expecting money, T-shirts or food. Both move with significant campaign teams to help with mobilization. The rest have small crowds. It is a two-horse race. Outside the two-horse race, Mugisha Muntu of (ANT) and Nandala Mafaabi of (FDC) are the most important of the fringe presidential candidates of the 2026 elections to be held on 15th January 2026. Mafaabi has strong credentials having worked with the World Bank and kept the Bugisu cooperative union alive when Museveni’s leadership killed other cooperatives. 

The calm Mugisha Muntu is a former army commander with an impeccable track record of integrity. He is strong on military and foreign affairs. He could tackle Uganda’s spiralling corruption and was easily the best in the Presidential debate NTV organised and President Museveni skipped on Sunday, November 30, 2025. There is no woman among the presidential elections and hardly any youthful candidate beyond the 43-year-old Bobi Wine. This is despite the fact that Uganda is a youthful nation with many women. Uganda’s old males are not about to cede power. It would be remiss to speak of a modern Ugandan presidential election without mentioning Kizza Besigye. He is behind bars following his Ugandan military abduction from Nairobi and military detention in Uganda since 16th November 2024 but the Ugandan people have not forgotten him and still insist that he be freed from his unmistakeable political persecution and judicial harassment. 

On the presidential race, especially in Besigye’s home region of Kigyezi, Ugandans asked President Museveni to let their son free. When Bobi Wine campaigned there, he voiced demands and support for the liberty of Besigye. The people rightly understand that it is Museveni politically persecuting their son and that the Courts will not free him unless Museveni nods. The 2026 elections are not just playing out in rallies, playgrounds, towns and villages. The aspirants are also quoting cultural and religious leaders. It may be subtle but it is energetic. Most religious leaders are acting neutral as expected but a few have made their preferences clear. What some men of God have been more vocal about is the abductions, torture and persecution of their sheep. The country could do with more demands for liberty of Ugandans from religious pulpits. 

Abductions have spread to prey on some clerics most recently including the disappearance and eventual arraignment in Masaka Court of a visibly traumatised Fr. Ssekabira over money laundering charges. This case smacks of political engineering because following outcry by the church and public, the army had conceded detaining him over violence related charges. Money laundering is about money, not violence. The military does not heed all public outcries to release Ugandans it abducts and illegally detains. It has held onto Sam Mugumya who the military picked on Monday, August 26, 2025. Sam Mugumya wanted to participate in the 2026 elections as an aspirant for Rukungiri Municipality. He remains in illegal military detention to date. Like Besigye, any chances of the military loosening their grip on them will materialise well after the elections. 

Kenyans, Bob Njagi and Nicholas Oyoo, too, found themselves on the wrong side of the military hostility to political activism when military plucked the activist duo from Bobi Wine’s campaign trail on Wednesday, October 1, 2025. The Judge dismissed their application for habeas corpus wrongly claiming that seeking for them from the state was akin to squeezing blood from a stone. This judicial cowardice appeared even more ridiculous when Museveni himself acknowledged that the military had held them since it thought they were experts in riots. They Kenyans had former Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, to thank for their liberty after legal efforts proved futile. Uhuru dialled Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF). The CDF released the two Kenyans. Simple. Ugandan activists have no Uhuru to. 

Elections are unfair, unfree, and rigged from the outset but not pointless. They raise the civic awareness of the nation. Some good leaders at levels lower than the presidency may permeate the political table. But they are not viable routes to change a President in Uganda today given the grip the military has on the political process including all institutions of the state. Neither the election commission nor the courts can stand up to the military whenever it decides to go rogue - which is increasingly often. Institutions like police as so weak and militarised that they have been reduced to mere spectators of race they are supposed to professionally police. The military disrupts opposition rallies and beats Ugandans in their full view. Sometimes, they participate. The person who shoved lawyer and National Unity Platform (NUP) treasurer, Katana Benjamin, with a gun butt, in Western Uganda as he accompanied Bobi Wine, had police uniform. It is in police stations that the several NUP supporters, men and women, were detained, crammed together regardless of sex and denied access to lawyers until the government arraigned them in different courts. Some are still on remand. The courts have released a few. 

The government is pondering banning the waving, holding and wearing of the national flag illegal. It is close to doing so as though the energy and patriotism evinced by flag waving, flag wearing and flag hugging by opposition NUP supporters is criminal. The government has irked by popular use the national flag. The people are irked by the pronouncements of the CDF, military spokesperson and the EC chairperson telling people not to guard their votes and leave the polling stations after voting. They are alive to the history of vote rigging in Uganda. The opposition chief, Bobi Wine and his team have urged Ugandans to campaign, vote, protect the vote and demand their victory - kanonye, kalonde, kakume, kabanje. 

The intended use of biometric machines has not allayed the fears of the voters about the vote rigging. Will the machines work? Can they be trusted? How did they perform in Kenya? Can the EC be trusted? Will the machines be in all polling stations? In Uganda, voting materials sometimes delay to reach polling stations especially in opposition strongholds. We head into elections in an atmosphere of repression and collapse of trust in state institutions emaciated by decades of Museveni’s military dictatorship and the little disguised onset of his son, Muhoozi’s freezing grip on state power in Uganda. Everywhere you look, the markers and institutions of governance are worsening. The military is Museveni’s family military and has long stopped to serve as a national institution but descended into the political arena including beating up opposition stalwarts, abducting dissidents and giving orders on how the cosmetic elections should be run. Museveni can also count on his military to supress any post-election demonstrations expressing dissatisfaction or demanding their victory. We are back to 1980 where the major political refrain to the leading opposition is where are your Generals? 

We are moving in circles that Ugandans had designed the 1995 Ugandan Constitution to stop. The army is back on the streets - beating Ugandans, abducting them, detaining them, judging them and telling them how to vote and for how long. Vote and go back home, the army has barked illegal orders at the country and the EC chair, rather than challenge this unlawful conduct has echoed their illegal refrain. Some church voices are voicing concern but the religious figures are not showing enough conviction and solidarity yet. There is a nasty history to the church being a moral voice in Uganda against militarism in Uganda. Bishop Jonan Luwum died doing so during the Amin era. Like Judges, the men and women of God are afraid. 

This leaves a lot of work for civil society which Museveni has fought and so starved of resources that it is too weak to counteract state excesses or organise the population to resist the suppression of their voices. Worse still, the geopolitical reality is against the civil society. Development partners have closed both the financial and diplomatic taps. As though the they have not beaten the civil society enough, police arrested a prominent civil society leader, Sarah Birete, yesterday, Tuesday December 30, 2025 over what many suspect has to do with her remarks on how Ugandans can beat the imminent Internet ban in Uganda around election day. It happens every recent general election in Uganda. 

The media, too, is in a tortured state. Museveni banned Nation media from covering his events. Private media needs government adverts and must mind how they report about it. The media regulator, UCC beats them into the line when they display too much objectivity. It can ban the media house or specific programs or specific personalities. At an individual journalist level, it is dangerous to report some stories. I have lost count of the number of tortured journalists over their stories in the years leading to these elections. The police and military target and break or confiscate their equipment like cameras if they think the media has captured violating the law or otherwise harassing the people. Never mind that most the culprits in the security forces are hooded or masked and the number plates of the cars they use - especially the famous drones - are covered to avoid accountability and aid denial. 

The lawyers are often expected to provide some answers to these situations but the judiciary is weak and prone to political manipulation. It is staffed with Museveni loyalists. He has appointed all of the judges and justices from High Court to the Supreme Court prioritizing loyalty over merit. The good ones are pushed over or bypassed for promotions and appointments. They worst are rewarded creating a heightened state of judicial kakistocracy and fear to stand up for justice, judicial independence and rule of law. Many lawyers are standing up for justice but their efforts are diluted by a weak judiciary afraid of the military. The country is drowning in fear as it edges towards the 15th January 2025 presidential and parliamentary elections. 

About Author
Eron Kiiza is a Ugandan human rights lawyer, environmental justice advocate, and writer whose work is rooted in the defense of civil liberties and the pursuit of social and political accountability. An Advocate of the High Court of Uganda, he is widely known for representing political activists, human rights defenders, and communities affected by land dispossession and environmental destruction. His legal and advocacy work consistently challenges the misuse of state power and seeks to amplify the voices of marginalized communities. 
Beyond the courtroom, Eron Kiiza is an outspoken public intellectual and poet whose writing engages themes of justice, resistance, and freedom. He has been at the forefront of campaigns opposing environmental degradation and the criminalization of dissent, drawing national and international attention to shrinking civic space in Uganda. Through both legal action and public commentary, he remains committed to advancing human rights, environmental protection, and democratic values.