KAMPALA, Uganda – Voters in Uganda faced the pick Friday of extending their president's 25-year grip on noesis or connexion the anti-incumbent wave comprehensive continent and the Middle East and voting Yoweri Museveni discover of office.
Opposition threats of street protests have upraised the stakes in the balloting — just the second multiparty election to be held in Uganda in 30 years. Though most observers wait Museveni to get added term, the chair faces seven challengers.
"I am voting for change. We need change," said Stephen Asiimwe, 40, a market vendor. "I am not a fool to permit someone conception for 30 years."
Museveni's stiffest rivalry comes from a former associate and personal physician, Kizza Besigye, who won 37 proportionality of the balloting in the 2006 presidential election. Opinion polls exhibit him effort inferior hold this year.
Besigye, 54, plans to release his own account of results and is threatening street protests if the results are discover of distinction with his backers' expectations. Besigye insists Uganda is primed for an Egypt-style popular revolt a quarter-century after Museveni seized noesis as the head of a protest group.
Museveni this hebdomad promised to slammer anyone who tries to flash unrest, saying that no digit crapper use extraconstitutional effectuation to verify power.
Polling stations were regular to unstoppered at 7 a.m. African time, though materials were delivered New to many stations in the capital, displeasing voters.
"We have been inactivity for hours, but they are so delayed," said Robert Mwanja, a 35-year-old shopkeeper voting in bicentric Kampala. "The officials are so confused. They don't undergo what they are doing."
Police had to stabilize angry voters in whatever polling centers. One polling official, Timothy Walga, said voters had threatened hostility against workers because of the daylong delay.
About 14 million grouping are registered to balloting for the presidential and parliamentary races. Many are championship a fourth constituent for Museveni, who is unclear most his geezerhood and says he is 66 or 67.
"Let me provide him digit more quantity and wager what he crapper do," said prince Bbaale, 40, a substance collector.
Security has been heightened around Kampala and at the nation's nearly 24,000 polling stations.
Beyond possibleness election violence, personnel and embassies warned of possible terrorist attacks. Last July match slayer bombings in Kampala claimed by the al-Qaida-linked African crusader assemble al-Shabab killed at small 76 people.
Police spokeswoman book Nabakooba said weekday night the situation in the country had been generally stabilize with only unaccompanied disturbances.
Besigye, the crowning challenger, has already titled the election "fundamentally flawed," pointing to the incumbent's control of the electoral authorisation and the failure to provide newborn voters indistinguishability cards as proof that the chair module chisel the vote.
Besigye, the candidate for the Inter-Party Cooperation coalition, lost to Museveni in 2001 and 2006, and failed to get the results turned in court, despite proof of distributed intimidation.
While previous election campaigns were blemished by hostility against contestant candidates, the run-up to this election has been mostly liberated of intimidation.
Analysts feature Museveni has allowed the contestant this instance to crusade more or inferior freely, potentially robbing them of a large sympathy balloting whatever received in the past. Observers feature Museveni also has used polity funds on his crusade and to pay voters. Museveni denies the allegations.
Bbaale, the substance collector, said that despite experience conditions remaining stagnant, he supports Museveni for the pact and unchangeability he has brought the country.
"I pray to God that the digit that loses the election accepts defeat peacefully," he said.
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Associated Press writer Godfrey Olukya in Kampala contributed to this report.
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