Museveni's efforts to ensure an electoral victory will almost certainly be successful, but will only exacerbate simmering resentment.
Uganda's upcoming January 15 election raises urgent questions about just what the whole process is intended to accomplish. Is an election an opportunity for citizens to express their preferences and hold incumbents accountable, or is it an opportunity for the state to remind citizens of its power and demand compliance? The two exercises could not be more different, and yet they go by the same name.
If past is prologue, Uganda's elections have a foregone conclusion. President Yoweri Museveni is closing in on forty years in power and has no qualms about using security forces to intimidate and assault opponents and their supporters. His government talks about the importance of "protecting the gains" made since 1986. In practice, that seems to mean protecting the regime's access to power. Five years ago, electoral conditions were so appalling that several observation missions simply could not operate. Scores of Ugandans were killed, and the most prominent opposition leader in the country, Robert Kyagulanyi, better known as Bobi Wine, was shot at, arrested and tortured over the course of his efforts to campaign.
There is no reason to expect this month's rematch of a Museveni/Wine contest to be any fairer. Opposition activists continue to be abducted and tortured; the government's response has been to arrest civil society leaders who have reported on these facts. Opposition rallies have been dispersed with tear gas, pepper spray, dogs, and beatings.
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The opposition standard-bearer in the years before Wine's rise to prominence, Kizza Besigye, has been in detention for over year, charged with treason. The government has banned broadcasts of "riots" or "unlawful processions", which is code for anti-government protests, and security forces have assaulted journalists attempting to cover Wine's campaign events.
Coming after Tanzania's disastrous late October election in which the most viable opposition candidates were not permitted on the ballot and protests against irregularities were met with shocking violence, Uganda's contest will likely be another defeat for genuine democracy in East Africa--a trend echoed in other parts of the continent, like Guinea and Cameroon.
These "elections" are really just displays of power, meant to remind the population of its place. The embedded contempt for popular opinion is fuel for the very grievances that make the state repellent to the people. In pursuit of stable access to power, the governments behind these electoral charades are actually destabilizing their countries. Simmering frustration and resentment will eventually reach a boil.
