Nairobi — As opposition parties line up candidates for next year's planned polls, analysts say the announcement of each new entrant increases incumbent President Yoweri Museveni's chances of completing a third decade as Uganda's ruler.

Museveni has ruled Uganda since January 26, 1986, when his guerrilla army stormed the capital Kampala and removed Tito Okello-Lutwa, an illiterate general who had deposed twice-president Milton Obote in a palace coup six months earlier.

He first fought against Idi Amin in a futile attack by Ugandan exiles from Tanzania in 1972, before being helped by a 45,000-strong invading Tanzanian army to take power from Amin seven years later.

He lost a contested poll won by Obote in December 1980 and soon after launched his bush war with 27 veterans of the anti-Amin struggle.

The country has been stable since he came to power, allowing Museveni to entrench his rule.

Uganda remains a de facto one-party state, in the words of US Senator Russ Feingold.

Museveni's failure to end abject poverty, though, coupled with rampant corruption among the ruling party's ranks, have marked him out as a leader susceptible to what analysts call "longevity attrition."

A number of leaders have of late emerged to challenge Museveni.

The latest is former UN diplomat Dr Olara Otunnu, who was a fortnight ago elected new head of Obote's old party, the Uganda People's Congress -- the president's third serious rival so far.

Other analysts say Museveni remains the most credible candidate on Uganda's political scene, even though his popularity has been waning since he first subjected himself to a direct vote in 1996.

Then, he won with 74.8 per cent of the vote; five years later, that count was down to 69 per cent.

In the last vote, which the opposition alleges he rigged, he managed just 59 per cent.

"He is still the only leader who has a clear vision for this country," said Bruce Kyerere, president of the usually critical Uganda Law Society. "The opposition -- unfortunately -- is yet to present a clear manifesto for this country despite having faced the same man in three polls," he added.

As he spoke, veteran Museveni foe Dr Kizza Besigye was campaigning in the country's north -- traditionally a hotbed of anti-Museveni sentiment -- where he told supporters at a rally to "break the thumbs" of anyone flashing the ruling party's thumbs-up salute.

"It is this kind of politics that does not get the opposition any mileage," added respected Kampala lawyer Oscar Kihika, a former president of the ULS.

Besigye is yet to get formal endorsement to run for the presidency from his Forum for Democratic Change party.

A national delegates conference set for April 15 will choose between him and another former soldier, Major-General Gregory Mugisha-Muntu, who was Museveni's army commander for nine years.

Besigye is tipped to win the contest, but will next year come up against Museveni as a much weaker opponent, analysts said.

First, though, he will have to be endorsed by the Inter-Party Coalition, a five-party group that aims to oust Museveni.

Its members see Besigye as their main hope and are most likely to endorse him, inside sources say.

Dr Otunnu says he too wants to be considered for the joint opposition candidacy.

Attempts to unite under one umbrella appeared to be faltering, with key parties staying out and lack of a clear plan to share power if the opposition wins, analysts said.

Several candidates have been put up outside the Inter-Party Coalition, by parties frustrated at Besigye's failure to unseat Museveni in the past two polls.

They include the Progressive People's Party of a long-serving Museveni minister, Bidandi Ssali.

Another challenger is Norbert Mao, 43, a charismatic two-time legislator who comes from the north.

For the first time, then, Museveni will face a northern candidate, in a challenge that returns the region into elective politics for the top job for the first time since Museveni removed northerners from power in 1986 -- which they had enjoyed almost unchallenged since Independence from Britain in 1962.

Most northerners have been voting against Museveni ever since.

The entry into the race of Mao, while being seen as a key re-entry point for northern Uganda, is however not expected to significantly affect the political equation.

"It was easy for Mao to win his party's presidency," said Makerere University political history lecturer Tanga Odoi, but "getting state power is not going to be as easy."

"The opposition needs one strong candidate to present a credible challenge to Museveni, but now they have three and counting," said Ugandan legislator Beti Kamya, whose Lubaga North constituency near Kampala is the cradle of most of Uganda's political leaders, including Parliament Speaker Edward Sekandi and Prime Minister Prof Apollo Nsibambi.

Mao came to the helm of the Democratic Party in February, in the process becoming the first leader in the party's 55-year history to come from outside the central Buganda region.

Divided loyalties

He said he would reach out to the youth and northern voters.

But analysts said neither of the two constituencies would vote for him as a bloc.

"Northern Uganda is likely to choose anyone -- even a southerner -- if he is seen as posing a challenge to Museveni," said northern legislator Hassan Fungaroo. "They may not see Mao, even though he is one of them, as capable of defeating Museveni," he added.

Moreover, DP was deeply divided at the time of Mao's election.

"His first task will be to reunite the party before reaching out for national voters," said former legislator Wasswa Lule, whose father, ex-Ugandan president Yusuf Lule replaced Amin.

Such divisions are characteristic of virtually all of Uganda's political parties as the polls draw close and campaigns begin in various forms countrywide.

Infighting within the political parties has invariably been used by Museveni to prove his thesis that Ugandan parties are immature, capable only of organising along tribal and religious rather than ideological lines -- the argument he used to ban them on assuming state power.

Rampant theft by public officials has been seen as the biggest blot on Museveni's rule, who is credited for ending 20 years of state-led tyranny ushered in by twice-ruler Milton Obote's coup against Uganda's first government in 1966.

He is also seen as having repaired the economy, with massive help from donors.

Museveni's other challenge appeared to be winning back huge blocks of voters from Buganda -- the country's largest ethnic group -- whom he alienated after he barred their traditional king, Ronald Mutebi from touring a region contested by a minority tribal chief.

Museveni is expected to use influential Baganda politicians named to his government to gain a following for him in the countryside, boosted by government loans to small co-operatives, said Kintu Nyago, a South African-trained political scientist close to the ruling party.

Shun Otunnu

Pro-monarchy Baganda politicians are waiting to back Museveni's strongest opponent but may shun an alliance that includes Otunnu, whose UPC party head Obote ended the centuries-old rule of Uganda's kings in 1966, analysts said.

Museveni has refused to yield to demands to grant the majority Baganda a political monarch and closed their key mouthpiece -- a feisty radio station in the capital -- after a riot in Kampala last September in which 27 people died.

A divided opposition is however likely to split the Buganda vote, adding to Museveni's chances of winning over the youth and rural voters now out of reach of Baganda opinion leaders through their radio station, Nyago said.