Uganda elections

It is easy in this country to take for granted what our commitment to the rule of law really means. As a people we agree to be governed by law, and not by who has the most guns. Even in the chaos of the 2000 presidential election, we let lawyers fight it out in court, not in the streets.

In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni won re-election in this week's elections, but the results have not settled the matter.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni won re-election on Saturday to extend a two-decade rule but his main rival rejected the results and opposition supporters clashed with security forces on the streets.

Final results gave the ex-guerrilla leader 59 percent of votes, compared with 37 percent for his former doctor and main rival, Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).

As Besigye announced his party was rejecting the outcome because of "widespread irregularities," police were turning teargas and a water-cannon on his supporters gathered outside FDC headquarters in a suburb of Kampala.

At one point, police fired shots over the head of the mainly young FDC backers, witnesses said. The youths threw rocks at the passing cars of celebrating Museveni supporters and had been taunting police for several hours.

"It is disgraceful that the NRM government has decided to use its power to terrorize people," Besigye.

Uganda's first multi-party election for a quarter of a century was being closely watched in the West as a test of African democracy and for the signal it might send to others in the region who have enjoyed lengthy stays in power.

As word of Museveni's victory spread, thousands of his supporters, clad in the yellow of his ruling Movement, blew whistles and honked car horns in the center of Kampala.

Motorbike riders in Movement T-shirts roared past waving the party's thumbs-up symbol. Others sang and chanted "No Change!" as they marched, some draped in dry banana leaves symbolizing another term for Museveni.

From a hill by the High Court, military police on two armored cars mounted with machine-guns surveyed the crowd.

At the FDC headquarters, Besigye supporters chanted "He has to go" and complained the election was stolen, until riot police drove them away.

"We are in a dictatorship now," protester Lubega Bashir, 21, told Reuters. "Why do they want to kill us just because we support our candidate?"

Also, from The Monitor:

Western Uganda was fast turning into a violent hotspot by yesterday afternoon with tension reportedly rising in the districts of Kabale and Ntungamo, while there were reported cases of voter bribery and intimidation in Bushenyi and Mbarara districts.

The region Uganda is home of the two leading candidates, the incumbent and NRM's Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Dr Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Rain, arrests, and allegations of voter bribery and voter intimidation and reported cases of poor voter turn out and late voting marred the exercise while hundreds of voters failed to vote as their names were missing on the register.

There were several reported cases of violence, intimidation, voter bribery and arrests in Kabale, which has become a bastion of the opposition FDC.

In Rukiga County, where FDC strongman and the incumbent Jack Sabiiti is battling NRM's Sam Byanagwa, a vehicle belonging to Capt. David Matsiko, the Director of Kyankwanzi political school is reported to have been burnt by angry residents as violence escalated.

Daily Monitor witnessed police patrol vehicles ferrying a unspecified number of people to Kabale town that were arrested from Bukinda in Rukiga, accused of inciting violence.