Joel Ssenyonyi, the spokesman for Uganda’s biggest opposition party, National Unity Platform (NUP), has accused the military of raiding offices where agents were gathering material for an election petition.
Ssenyonyi said the party was in the process of collecting election results forms that show evidence of irregularities in Thursday’s election.
“Each presidential candidate is provided with the declaration results form, why doesn’t he want to present the DR forms that were given to us by his electoral commission?”, Ssenyonyi questioned.
The opposition said they had photos and video evidence too.
“Museveni knows we have those things that is why he is shutting down the internet; he doesn’t want us to put those things out there for the whole of Uganda and the international community to realise how much of a fraudster he is,” he said.
This accusation comes as soldiers continued a siege on the house of Robert Kyagulanyi, the NUP’s presidential candidate in the January 14th election.
Kyagulanyi, a former reggae musician known as Bobi Wine, in a tweet on Monday, said the military had also cordoned off the NUP office premises.
“Heavily armed military and police have once again raided our party offices in Kampala,” he tweeted.
“No one allowed to go in or come out. Museveni after committing the most vile election fraud in history, has resorted to the most despicable forms of intimidation.”
President Yoweri Museveni – who first assumed power when Bobi Wine, now 38, was just four years old – won a contentious sixth term in office after polling 58.6 per cent of the vote.
Opposition parties said the election was fraudulent but Museveni, 76, has denied reports of irregularities, insisting that the poll could be the “most cheat-free” in the history of the African nation.
The EU, United Nations and several rights groups have raised concerns. Aside from an African Union mission, no major international group monitored the vote.
Morgan Ortagus, the spokesman for the U.S. State Department, also said those found culpable of election irregularities should be held accountable.
The department condemned “the continuing attacks on political candidates” and urged the government to “respect their human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of expression”.
On Sunday, Bobi Wine whose house was surrounded by security forces said – in a tweet – his family had run out of food.
He wrote, “It’s now four days since the military surrounded our home and placed my wife and I under house arrest. We have run out of food supplies and when my wife tried to pick food from the garden yesterday, she was blocked and assaulted by the soldiers staged in our compound.”