Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi who is commonly referred to as Bobi Wine has filed a petition at the Supreme Court in Kampala seeking to cancel President Yoweri Museveni’s recent electoral victory.
The country’s electoral commission declared Museveni, who has been in power for the past three and a half decades, winner of the January 14 election after he garnered 59% of the vote. Bobi Wine scooped 39%.
“We want the poll cancelled and repeated,” said George Musisi, lawyer for Bobi Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP), told local media.
Wine, 38, a pop star and lawmaker, has consistently rejected the results and said he believed his victory was stolen.
Musisi said his client was asking the court to overturn the results on several grounds including widespread use of violence.
“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.
Bobi Wine faces an uphill task in his bid to convince the courts as petitions to the results of all four previous elections won by Museveni have been dismissed by the country’s highest court.
