Uganda elects President and Members of Parliament today

_________________________
UGANDA DECIDES 2026

Over three months of grueling countrywide presidential campaigns shaped by a mix of ideas, conduct and context, are over and now Ugandans shift their focus to the ballot itself to choose their next President and Members of Parliament today (January 15).

The attention is on the 50,739 polling stations across Uganda, with 21,681,491 people registered to cast their votes in the general election.

This is the fifth successive multiparty general election since the disputed 1980 one, which led current President Yoweri Museveni to wage a five-year guerrilla war against Dr Milton Obote’s second government.  He took power against the background of a decade of brutality of Idi Amin’s regime, and has been putting his fate in the hands of the people.

The 81-year-old leader is now warding off seven rivals, who are also sponsored by political parties.

They are:

▪️ Robert Kyagulanyi of National Unity Platform (NUP)
▪️ Nathan Nandala Mafabi of Forum for Democratic Change (FDC)
▪️ Mugisha Muntu of Alliance for National Transformation (ANT)
▪️ Robert Kasibante of National Peasants Party (NPP)
▪️ Mubarak Munyagwa of Common Man’s Party (CMP)
▪️ Frank Kabinga of Revolutionary People’s Party (RPP)
▪️Joseph Mabirizi of Conservative Party (CP)

Over 2,500 vie for parliamentary seats

A total of 2,546 candidates were nominated to contest for 499 parliamentary seats — 2,025 for the 353 directly elected MPs and 521 for the 146 district Women representatives.

However, about 12 parliamentary candidates in various parts of the country were disqualified for various irregularities and the Electoral Commission (EC) promised that there will be notices at the polling stations in those areas urging voters not to vote for them.

Analysts say the issue of de-nominated candidates on the ballot paper is a big one and can confuse voters and lead to more invalid votes. In the 2021 general election, invalid votes were 400,000.

In that election, Uganda had 18,103,603 registered voters but the turnout was around 57%. In the 2016 election, there were 15,277,198 registered voters, with a turnout of about 67.6%, which was a little stronger but still imperfect, according to some analysts.

The ballot

Officially, Thursday's polls opened at 7:00am and will close at 4:00pm. The Electoral Commission implored voters to arrive in time and exercise their constitutional and democratic right to elect their representatives.

Justice Simon Byabakama (pictured below, L), who heads the commission, said they would deploy two biometric voters’ verification kits (BVVK) at each polling station, which would be operated by one officer. Each polling station would have seven polling officials, including a police constable.

Here is how it works:

A voter is issued with three ballot papers for President, Woman MP and directly elected MP.

They then present their national ID or voter location slip when they arrive for voting and if they do not have either, the presiding officer helps confirm their details on the hard copy of the national voters register.

After the presiding officer confirms the voter’s name, they use the biometric voter verification machine to verify their identity by scanning their fingerprints or their face.

After verification, the presiding officer scans the ballot papers and issues them to the voter, who then moves on to elect their preferred candidates.

A voter marks a candidate of their choice, for each elective position, using either a tick or thumbprint, before folding the ballot paper as directed and inserting it into the ballot box for the respective elective position.

The polling assistant marks their finger to show that they have voted.