Elections in Africa are today the undisputed ticket to regime legitimacy. However, as much of sub-Saharan Africa embraces elections, they have also set up a death match between competing elites—turning elections into the single most destabilizing event in Africa. When Uganda went to the polls in February 2011, it did so under great pressure that elections provide its ruler of 25 years, Yoweri Museveni, with a legitimate claim to power. However, the wanton misuse of public funds weakened the economy, sparking Egypt-style riots that were brutally suppressed and revealing the vulnerability of Uganda’s institutions of governance.
About the Authors
Angelo Izama
Angelo Izama has been a Knight Fellow at Stanford University and a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. A journalist with the Kampala Daily Monitor for more than ten years, he writes frequently on governance in Uganda as well as regional security in Central Africa.
Michael Wilkerson is a graduate student in Politics at Oxford University, where he is a Marshall Scholar. He was a 2009–2010 Fulbright researcher in Uganda and has written from Uganda in a variety of local and international media.
Uganda’a move to a multiparty system is really a maneuver by President Yoweri Museveni to prolong his stay in power beyond the two-term limit mandated by the constitution.
The decision by Uganda’s leaders to abandon the country’s “movement” system and adopt multiparty pluralism creates a significant opportunity for democratic progress.
Longtime president Yoweri Museveni, his ruling party, and his increasingly militarized regime opened 2021 with a grossly unfair election. But time may be on the side of Uganda’s young voters…
