Ugandan police fired tear gas to disperse furious voters in the capital Kampala yesterday as the election commission apologised for hours-long delays in delivering ballot papers in some areas.
Voting in Uganda’s national elections was due to begin at 7am (0400 GMT) but was stalled for several hours in some polling stations in parts of the city and the surrounding Wakiso district, where ballot boxes and papers did not arrive on time.
The capital traditionally shows strong support for the opposition.
“There has been a delay in delivery of polling materials in some parts of Wakiso district and Kampala capital city. The Electoral Commission regrets the delay,” the commission said in a statement. “The polling materials have now been delivered to all these places and polling has commenced in most of the places.”
Some frustrated voters accused the authorities of deliberately stalling the vote.
“People are quite angry and everybody is believing that there is something wrong behind this because of the way they are delaying things,” said Moses Omony, a motorbike taxi driver.
“We know this has been done intentionally,” said Marius Nkata, a builder.
International election observers warned that hours-long delays in delivering ballot papers in the national polls would not “inspire trust”, with some frustrated voters and the opposition accusing the authorities of deliberately stalling the vote.
“A delay of an hour or two is excusable. Delays of three, four, five and even six hours, especially in Kampala, are absolutely inexcusable and will not inspire trust and confidence in the system and the process,” Olusegun Obasanjo, the head of the Commonwealth Observer Group in Uganda, told AFP.
The election commission meanwhile appealed for patience, saying that it “calls on candidates, their agents and supporters, to be calm and tolerant as always during the polling process”.
Social media, including Facebook and Twitter, were largely inaccessible on voting day although Internet-savvy Ugandans dodged the apparent shutdown using virtual private networks.
Government regulator the Uganda Communications Commission said that the attempted shutdown was for “security reasons” without giving details.
President Yoweri Museveni is widely predicted to win a fifth term, with the 71-year-old former rebel fighter who seized power in 1986 entering his fourth decade in power.
After casting his vote in the west of the country, the 71-year old incumbent said he was going to have a rest.
“I have not been sleeping,” he said. “Tomorrow I will go for my cross-country walk to exercise and then go to my cows.”
He added that anyone threatening election violence would be “put in the freezer” to cool down.
The strongest among Museveni’s seven challengers is Kizza Besigye, 59, who is making his fourth run at the presidency and ended his campaign by claiming the election would be neither free nor fair.
Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party meanwhile said that the candidate has been arrested after he went to check on reports of an illegal tally centre in his home district manned by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.
“He walked in and saw them pre-ticking ballot papers. They arrested him and took him to an unknown place,” said senior FDC official Shawn Mubiru.
There was no immediate police confirmation, but Besigye has been repeatedly detained by police in the past, and is commonly released without charge hours later.
More than 15mn Ugandans were registered to vote, casting ballots in more than 28,000 polling stations for both a president and members of parliament, with 290 seats being contested by candidates from 29 political parties.
More than 150,000 police, soldiers and other security forces have been deployed to ensure tight security, according to election officials.
Initial results are expected as early as tomorrow afternoon with the leading candidate requiring more than 50% of votes cast to avoid a second round run-off.