Preliminary Results Show Museveni Leads Uganda’s Presidential Election

KAMPALA, Xinhua: Initial results show Uganda’s incumbent President Yoweri Museveni took a lead in the presidential election, the country’s electoral body said on Friday.

Releasing the third batch of results, Simon Byabakama, chairperson of the Electoral Commission, said that Museveni, who is seeking a seventh five-year term of office, had secured 75.38 percent of the votes counted so far.

His closest challenger, Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, has garnered 20.71 percent, while the remaining votes were shared among six other candidates.

Byabakama said about 7.7 million votes had been tallied, without revealing the total number of ballots cast in Thursday’s presidential elections.

Under electoral rules, a candidate must obtain more than 50 percent of the total valid votes to be declared the winner.

Byabakama said the election day was largely calm, with only a few incidents reported, and urged the public to remain calm as results continue to be collated nationwide. Final results are expected to be announced by Saturday.

Uganda on Thursday held presidential and parliamentary elections, with more than 21 million Ugandans expected to cast ballots to elect the president and 353 directly elected members of parliament.