Last week’s election in Uganda illustrated just how far-reaching the Internet’s impact on politics has become. The African nation’s first multi-party election in over twenty years took place last Thursday, with the presidency and all seats in parliament up for grabs. Technology played a much more significant role in the proceedings than it ever has before.

The 93.3KFM signal, a subsidiary of the Monitor Publications, has been restored after being off-air for two days reportedly for relaying results from last Thursday’s poll without the authority of the Electoral Commission. The Monitor managing director, Conrad Nkutu, who claimed that the station and the newspaper’s websites were blocked by the Government, said the internal affairs minister, Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, told him on Friday that security agencies had jammed KFM and blocked the paper’s website.

There are many similarities between the Ugandan political situation and that of Zimbabwe. While Uganda did not have political parties from the post Idi Amin era, Zimbabwe has had a dictator in President Robert Mugabe.

The Congo crisis of 1998 was a political situation which benefited the Uganda army as well as the Zimbabwe army in addition to all top officials in these countries. The visit in Congo was not nationalistic at all but very selfish, causing clashes between African states

Considering that after the first shock at the coming back of Besigye from exile and his announcement of the formation of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Museveni launched a militia to suppress the strength of opposition, a replica of what Mugabe did in 2000.

Zimbabwe has gone through the militia era but not through a military coup era as yet and I do not see many of us longing or wishing for any such experience anyway.

The difference between Uganda's passage to freedom and that of Zimbabwe is that Uganda has a rich background of very able leadership, unlike Zimbabwe which was born and is dying under the pillage of a dictator of the magnitude of Idi Amin. Ugandans need to be praised for sustaining a fight for democracy. Besegye like many other heroes of liberation should be encouraged to fight on and set a better face of Uganda. Similarly, Morgan Tsvangiarai has to be given exhortation to carry on.

It’s make or break time for Ugandans as they go to the polls February 23 following a bitterly fought campaign between long-time president Yoweri Museveni and his rival Kizza Besigye. Onyango Obbo, a columnist with the East African Newspaper, argues that it’s the first time the opposition feel that Museveni can be beaten. These elections, they say, present the last opportunity to choose the democratic option.

Ugandans vote in presidential and parliamentary elections February 23, in make or break polls. It has been the most bitterly fought and personality-attack filled campaign since President Yoweri Museveni came to power in January 1986 at the head of a successful rebellion. It's the first time that the optimists in the opposition feel that Museveni is beatable.

Uganda and Museveni have come a long way. The first presidential election under the new constitution in 1996 was nothing more than a coronation for the president. That Museveni is thought to be vulnerable today is testimony as much to the corrupting impact a long unchallenged rule can have on what started out as an enlightened presidency, and the toll the passage of time takes on even the best champions.

The Museveni government imposed what it called a "no-party" system, but critics said was no different than an old-style African one-party rule. Under the "no-party" system, candidates for presidential and parliamentary office stood on their own "individual" merit, not on political party platform.

Museveni's ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), on the other hand, could back candidates because, unlike the old political parties, its supporters were understood to be standing on the "individual merit" principle. They would also get campaign contributions from the NRM Secretariat, which was funded by the taxpayer.

This made sure that Museveni won handily. On the other hand, the pro-multiparty opposition were always doomed to be a tiny minority. To some, it was a little too Kafkesque. But the country embraced the no-party idea, and between 1986 and 1996 Museveni enjoyed a level of popularity unparalleled in recent Uganda history.

One of Museveni's successes came from understanding the country's desperate need for normalcy, and tapping into it. The results were dramatic. By the mid-1990s, inflation had been wrestled from the highs of 300 per cent just ten years earlier, to –1 per cent! These were the times of heady growth rates nearing 10 per cent. Museveni became the archetype of the "new breed" of African leader, and Uganda was touted as the continent's "economic success model".

Yet, for all that, in 2001 a doctor and former military officer, Kizza Besigye, gave Museveni a run for his money in the presidential elections. Besigye was the NRM's first chief political ideologue, the National Political Commissar, and then minister of State for Internal Affairs. He left in the early 1990s to take a military command at a barracks in the western part of the country, and little was heard of him. Besigye resurfaced to play a role in the first early crack in the then formidable and united NRM edifice.

In 1994 there were elections to the Constituent Assembly that the NRM swept. The fate of political parties became a big issue in the Assembly. Several NRM supporters, notably the military representatives, argued that the no-party system was a temporary arrangement, and the new constitution should either provide immediately for a return to multiparty politics or adopt a timetable for it. Besigye was an outspoken member of that group. However, Museveni cracked the whip and used the ruling party's majority to adopt the no-party (or Movement) system as the permanent form of politics, which could only be changed by a national referendum.

In order to deal with criticism by the small pro-multiparty delegates that the NRM was creating a one-party dictatorship, some sweeteners were thrown in. Among these was a two five-year term for president. Because at that point Museveni was about to serve out two unelected terms, it was provided that the counting of the two terms began from when the new constitution was enacted.

In any event, the beginning of the tensions between what came to be known as hardliners and moderates or progressives in the NRM, had been born. In addition, events soon demonstrated that the problem with competitive politics in Africa is not so much that it creates divisions, but that the dynamics of elections generally work the same way in most societies. This is because although the NRM banned political parties under the auspices that they create divisions, it proved unable to cure itself of the same maladies. Just as particular ethnic communities and religions come to dominate particular parties in underdeveloped countries with a multiparty system, so do they come to dominate the sole party under a one-party arrangement. Soon, the Museveni regime was being accused of being dominated by politicians from the western region where he came from.

Parts of the country that weren't substantially represented in the NRM felt alienated, none more so than the northern region. In the British colonial division of labour, the north was the reservoir for manual labour and the army. The southwest provided the professional classes and civil servants. Despite gaining some power, the elite from the region became just another addition to the middle class with other Ugandan communities. They set up shop and invested their new wealth in the south – helping only to exacerbate the regional differences.

Museveni's ascendance to power brought a profound crisis for the north. For the first time in Uganda's history, the region neither held military or political power. Without that, it lost all means of negotiating for the political spoils at the centre. It required a great dose of political sensitivity to recognise the crisis that had befallen the region.

That, and the fact that in many parts of the country "northern rule" had become so deeply resented, combined to make for a potentially explosive situation. The eruption came when after Museveni's victory, units of a right wing group called Uganda Freedom Movement that had been absorbed in the National Resistance Army massacred civilians in the north. Feeling threatened, members of the old defeated army, the Uganda National Liberation Army, fled to southern Sudan, regrouped as the Uganda Democratic Army and started a rebellion against the Museveni government.

That conflict was settled through a negotiated settlement in 1988. However, the fact of the rebellion meant that a wider national reconciliation with the north became difficult. It also reinforced most of the rest of the country's view that the northern leaders remained intransigent and unrepentant about the atrocities of "their" past rule.

To complicate matters, a social movement, which saw the 1988 peace agreement as capitulation by a corrupt northern elite, mushroomed. A Prophetess, Alice Lakwena, who preached to her believers that if they smeared themselves with shea oil, the bullets of the government soldiers wouldn't kill them, led it. After Lakwena's defeat, the present Lord's Resistance Army led by her cousin Joseph Kony emerged.

Perhaps without the rebellion in the north, the outcome of Museveni's rule would have been totally different, and today he might well have been enjoying a status near that of South Africa's Nelson Mandela. However, the insurgency and several other smaller ones in the south and west that were quickly snuffed out, meant that Museveni's consolidation of power proceeded with a lot of distraction, and the whiff of illegitimacy from a failure to fully pacify the country.

Today everything is worse off in what was an already economically depressed northern region than in the rest of Uganda. Poverty levels are almost twice as high; HIV infections are double the national average; life expectancy is nearly 10 years less than the rest of the country; and the school enrolment rate is the worst too.

There is a widely held view that such bleak conditions could have been prevented, with a different set of decisions in Kampala. In any event, the war in the north strengthened the hand of the hardliners in the NRM, and when the first adult suffrage elections under Museveni came, the fact that the conflict was still alive meant that politicians could only exploit it. The rebellion in the north was used by Museveni's opponents to argue that the "no party" was a failure. For the NRM, it was a reason why they needed to have a strong showing in the CA - to make a constitution that would ensure that the "backward forces of the past", as they called their rivals, didn't return to torment the country. And so the country went to the polls.

Museveni's NRM won a marvellous victory in the 1994 Constituent Assembly election. Sadly, from then on, the NRM grew addicted to playing the "northern card", because it was the magic formula for winning elections. However, that addiction progressively transformed it into a reactionary organisation, and widened the gulf between the progressives and the hardliners in the ruling party. The big clash between these two sides, however, never came until 2001.

Up to about eight years ago, Uganda was heavily dependant on aid. In return, the donors exercised a lot of influence over government action and policy. After many years of uncritically supporting Museveni, they started to speak, softly though, about the need to find a political settlement to the war in the north, reducing defence expenditure, and what they called "opening up the political space". However, defence expenditure had by now become a critical source of political slush funds for the NRM.

In response to this situation, and the need to find new sources of support, the privatisation programme was accelerated. The attempt to use the process to create a class of moneyed people who were grateful to the NRM, led to massive corruption in the exercise. The smell of corruption did a lot to damage President Museveni's standing. Then, with shrinking wiggle room for the government to cream off money from the budget without getting the donors' hackles, Kampala found a disastrous way out.

Uganda had sent its army into a security buffer inside the Democratic Republic of Congo to prevent attacks by Allied Democratic Front rebels. However, when the DRC's president Laurent Kabila became embattled when fresh rebellion broke out in his country again in 1998, Uganda took advantage of the resulting chaos and power vacuum to send its army deep into the vast central African nation. There it either occupied or controlled through an alliance of local militia, a large swathe of territory from the Uganda border up to Kinshasa and beyond.

The DRC expedition became an exercise in which some elements of the ruling NRM exploited the troubled country's vast resources to raise money for politics back home, particularly for the 2001 elections. There is a widely held view that the DRC occupation was the turning point for Museveni's presidency.

It was in this situation that Besigye announced in 2000 that he was to challenge Museveni. Unaccustomed to the kind of audacious internal challenge from a Movementist (as supporters of the NRM are known), Museveni overreacted to Besigye's ambitions. A special militia, the Kalangala Action Plan, was set up to unleash violence on Museveni's rivals' supporters. The election, that Museveni eventually won, was to be marred by extensive rigging.

Besigye challenged the result in the Supreme Court. By a unanimous decision, the five judges agreed that the elections had been stolen. However, by a razor thin margin of 3 against 2, they also held that the margin by which the election was rigged couldn't have affected the final outcome. In that sense, like US President George Bush in 2000, Museveni owes his 2001 victory partly to the courts. The president's prestige suffered further, and the star status he enjoyed at home and internationally eluded him in his next term. Besigye, claiming he was being persecuted, fled into exile in South Africa, where he lived until the end of October last year.

The idealism that had made Museveni so admired has been largely shrinking the last five years. And sharp internal divisions inside the NRM marked his last term. Because the reputation of the president and government had taken a big hit, there was no way they could create what critics claimed was a presidency for life, without making some political concessions and finding new sources of legitimacy. This they attempted to do by abandoning their long held opposition, and supporting the re-introduction of multiparty politics late last year. The calculation was that the country could live with Museveni being allowed to run again, if it got multiparty politics in return.

Besigye's return from exile suggests that that might have been a miscalculation . Huge and passionate crowds received Besigye. The new party, the Forum for Democratic Change, that had been formed through the merger of Besigye's 2001 election organisation, Reform Agenda, and other pro-democracy groups, quickly elected Besigye as their presidential candidate.

As he travelled around the country, he received a reception that no other politician had ever got. In some towns, they had to cancel his rallies as the crowds went out of control. Besigye seemed to tap into the pent up frustrations at 20 years of Museveni's rule. The government panicked, and barely two weeks after his return, Besigye was arrested and charged with a rape that allegedly took place eight years ago, and treason. At the same time as he faced those charges in the High Court, he was also charged with terrorism in the High Court.

The day Besigye was arrested, running battles broke out between his supporters and heavily armed police and soldiers in armoured vehicles. It was the first time since the last years of colonial rule in the 1950s that ordinary Ugandans, other than university students, had taken to the streets in a political protest.

Besigye spent a month in prison, with dramatic scenes whenever he came to court. Because of large crowd turnouts on the days he would be in court, streets would be closed off. And in a shocking display of force, on the day he and his co-accused were to be granted bail, a hitherto secret commando unit, the Black Mambas, surrounded the court. The prisoners and their sureties, fearing what might happen to them if they were taken away by the commandos, gave up their right to bail and decided to be taken back to the civilian prison.

This was a Uganda many thought had gone with Amin, and it did little to help Museveni. The only thing it achieved was turning Besigye from a party leader, to a symbol of democracy. It also gave him national recognition far more than anything he or his party would have done to get. However, after his release late December, the novelty that he had as a candidate running from a prison cell seems to have begun to wear off almost immediately.

According to opinion polls, the combined support for Uganda Peoples' Congress leader Mrs Miria Obote, the country's first female presidential candidate; the Democratic Party's Mr Sebaana Kizito; and the independent Mr Abed Bwanika, is less than 15 per cent. The Daily Monitor polls show that if they were to back the single candidacy of Besigye, his support would rise, but not enough for him to leap in the lead. Only the 'Weekly Observer' has, so far, done polls that showed Besigye leading with 47 per cent saying they would vote for him, against 35 per cent for Museveni.

However, so far both Museveni and his trusted generals have suggested that they will not hand over power if they lost. So whichever way this election turns out, it is difficult to see how Uganda's democracy can win. Indeed since 1980, every election has left the country more divided, and the victor and his government more discredited. It's therefore unlikely that the elections will result in the notable expansion of democratic space that happened in Kenya in 2002, for example, with the opposition National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) defeat of the Kenya African National Union, which had been in power for 38 years at that point.

Nevertheless, it could all still have turned out differently. Even after amending the constitution to allow himself to stand for another term, Museveni would have salvaged some of this old prestige from these elections. Because the other parties have only been able to operate legally for five months now, they face an uphill task running against an entrenched NRM, which is still enjoying access to state resources. Already, it's only the NRM that has fielded candidates for Parliament, who will be elected simultaneously on February 23, in all but one of the constituencies. While Besigye might get the bigger crowds, he doesn't have the political machine to turn those numbers into votes.

A free election, as most of the independent polls suggest, would at worst result in a run off if Museveni, who leads in most of them, wouldn't be able to get the more than 50 per cent that the law requires the winner to get. In a run-off, it's not certain that all the candidates would back Besigye. Or that if they did, they he would win because the polls indicate that Museveni would still do better.

Also Museveni would probably have won clean if he had fought a positive campaign and focussed on his achievements, which still resonate with many voters. However, the campaigns have degenerated into a carnival of crude personality attacks, with everything from the two leading candidates' sexual transgressions, to theirs and their wives and children's health and private shortcomings being aired.

However, a Museveni margin in a high-minded election would be thin. Because of the inexplicable mindset in the NRM that a slim win is not legitimate enough, the Museveni campaign has always had to resort to underhand methods to bolster the margin of victory. In so doing, as in the past, he is set to pluck moral defeat out of the jaws of political victory.

At a wider Eastern Africa level, the Uganda elections are being watched for something larger. By 2013, the three partner countries in the East African Community – Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – plan to establish a political federation. By that time, Rwanda, and possibly Burundi, might have joined the EAC, although they would be part of the common market only, not the political federation. In this grouping, Uganda would be the only country without presidential term limits. There are many voices in Kenya and Tanzania that are already saying Uganda has set out on a path that makes it "incompatible". Uganda is also the only country in the EAC that has never had a democratic change of leaders at the polls.

The test for the country has always been whether it can break with its past, and establish civil democratic politics, or would revert to its violent ways to change its leaders. The February 23 elections are the last opportunity to strike a blow for the democratic option.

* Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's managing editor for Convergence and New Products. Email: cobbo (at) nation.co.ke

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The people of Uganda go to the polls today (February 23). It is an election that is historical in more ways than one. It is the first multiparty elections since the National Resistance Army and Movement (NRA/M) captured power in 1986 and ushered in almost two decades of “No Party” government under President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. It is an election in which the voters are faced with much clearer choice of candidates. The voters are also spoilt for choice of candidates at various levels from the plainly mediocre to the comical to the serious, and many in between. It is probably the most controversial election campaign yet.

The election tourism industry has flourished and their allied clients in local and international NGOs, hotels, entertainment, taxis, car hires, food sellers and business centres must be wishing the campaigning had gone on longer. Even us columnists, especially my colleagues who mostly comment on Ugandan domestic issues, may find less passionate issues to rant on and on about.

Initial reports from different observers have been typical of what one has come to expect these days. It seems the statements are already written before they arrive, or the templates are in the laptops and all they need to do is just cut and paste - changing location, country and names of parties and candidates as and where necessary. A minority of the voter tourists have suggested that due to the lack of level balance between the government and the opposition the election may not be fully free and fair. The majority of reports so far, including that of the African Union (AU), released on Tuesday, 21 February, suggest that in spite of a few incidents including violence, they are confident that the campaigns have generally been 'ok' and look forward to a free and fair election.

The opposition and the ruling parties and their supporters react to these assessments differently depending on their political interests. But there is no denying the truth that the government did engage in underhand methods, some of them so crude and crass that they beggar disbelief. There was clear intimidation of the opposition and disruption of their campaigns. The main opposition candidate and former follower of Museveni, Kiiza Besigye, was facing trial for treason and in a new political low, trial for alleged rape, and was in and out of courts and detention centres, as well as campaigning across the country. Even some supporters of the ruling party have claimed intimidation, especially in opposition strong holds. But it is an unequal balance of terror because the ruling party and government always has greater power and leverage for intimidation than the opposition.

Debates and controversies will definitely continue after the elections but today the people of Uganda have the chance to award marks to all the candidates and parties and decide who governs Uganda for the next five years.

It is a right that has been won with blood and struggles. It is not a gift from any leader or party. It is not just those who went to the bush to fight dictatorship who made democratisation possible. The millions who stayed in the country, kept working in spite of all odds, kept hope alive and supported the struggles in non armed ways have also made their contributions - and many of them also paid with their lives. There was a tendency on the part of Museveni and his zealots to equate opposition to him as treason.

But democracy like rainfall knows no good or bad farmer - it will pour on all. This means that even those who were on the wrong side of the democratic struggles have the right to democratic freedoms and protection within the law. As people vote today, the controversies and passions not withstanding, they will still be inhabiting the same country with their political opponents, this time tomorrow and the day after regardless of the outcome of the vote.

It is important for every qualified citizen to exercise their democratic right to decide who governs them, although it is also democratic to refuse to vote if you feel that none of the candidates or parties represents your interest.

Of course the election, though the most decisive event is not the only proof of democracy. The process leading to it is also important in determining the legitimacy of the outcome. And voting in itself is not enough. As Joseph Stalin (no pretender for any democratic values) once observed, while he was not able to influence how people voted he could influence how the vote was counted. In many countries, not just Africa, even the way people vote can be influenced. However, the decisive influence often tends to be the counting. People must defend their mandate by ensuring that all their votes are properly counted and that the results tally with how they voted. In the polling booths today, as millions cast their votes, they must ask themselves: would I be able to live with myself this time tomorrow if this candidate wins? Is this person the best for the peace and prosperity of all Ugandans?

Whatever the outcome, Uganda can never be the same again as the era of deepening multiparty democracy beckons. For Museveni and his acolytes it is either the end (if they lose) or the beginning of the end (when they win).

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Seven armoured trucks drove into an opposition crowd in Mukono, injuring several people, two of them critically. The brand new trucks- Humvees- fitted with communication gadgets and machine guns, were heading to Kampala. Opposition leader Kizza Besigye, who was waving to the crowd through his open-roof car, shouted at the soldiers as they forcibly pushed through. As the trucks moved ahead, after injuring several people, the angry crowd, which was heading for Besigye's afternoon rally, shouted at the soldiers. Sensing animosity, the soldiers, strapped with bullet chains, aimed their guns at the crowd sending the people in disarray.

Tens of thousands of people die every month in war torn northern Uganda as a result of disease, poor living conditions and war, according to a new report by NGOs working in the region. The report released by Civil Society Organisations for Peace in Northern Uganda (CSOPNU), said at least 131 people mostly children die everyday as a result of the violence and poor conditions in hundreds of IDP camps. "There are 918 excess deaths each week. Each month, almost 25,000 people in Uganda die from easily preventable diseases," CSOPNU said. This would translate into 47, 736 deaths in a year. CSOPNU is a coalition of about 40 member organisations advocating lasting peace in the region.

The Ugandan elections are in the news and a number of African bloggers provide commentary on the subject.

Ethan of My Heart’s in Accra - http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/?p=380 - reports on the ongoing pre-election violence and most worrying of all the deployment of 12,000 soldiers by Museveni to “prevent poll violence”.

“…opposition supporters see this as clear intimidation, a sign that Museveni will use the army to retain power even if he’s unsuccessful at the ballot box.”

There is also the situation in war torn Northern Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army have been fighting what Ethan describes as a “incomprehensible war” for the past 10 years. There has also been reports that the army has threatened voters in the region that they will pull out if people do not vote for Museveni. Despite all this it seems many Ugandans do not know there is an election on Thursday.

“According to their survey, only 53% of Ugandans polled knew the election was taking place on Thursday. This may reflect an attempt to dampen voter turnout by Museveni, or the complications of advertising an election in a poor nation… but it seems surprising that a pivotal election would be so poorly known about.”

Kenyan Pundit - http://www.kenyanpundit.com/?p=131 - posts a speech by Prof. Joe Oloka-Onyango who provides some context behind the elections. Kenyan Pundit writes:

“The upcoming elections in Uganda will have implications on the future of democracy in the region as a whole…perhaps the ‘African Big Man’ syndrome is not about to vanish after all.”

Uganda-CAN - http://www.ugandacan.org/item/944 - focuses on Northern Uganda and the plight of child soldiers who even when they are rescued and returned to their homes continue to suffer – this time from friends and family.

“Uganda's former child soldiers, haunted by exposure to violence at a young age, often find little solace when reintegrated into their home communities. Abducted as youth into the throes of the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), children are forced to commit acts of violence against the country's northern population until they escape or are captured by the Ugandan military. But when they return home, the nightmare continues, as they face stigmatization from their family and peers.”

Ethiopian blog, written by journalist Andrew Havens, Meskel Square - http://www.meskelsquare.com/archives/2006/02/two_scenes_from.html - has been reporting on the drought faced by Ethiopians in the southern Moyale zone of the country.

“Moyale is at the heart of a devastating drought that has left an estimated 737,000 Ethiopians struggling to survive without access to clean water. Beyond Ethiopia, the drought has spread out to affect more than 8.3 million people, including 1.2 million children aged under five, across the Horn of Africa.”

Meskel Square personalises his report by focusing on the driver of the only water truck, Tafesech Sahele, a 45-year-old mother-of two from Addis Ababa, who delivers water after filling up from the only three boreholes in the area.

Kenyan Blogger – Gukira - http://gukira.blogspot.com/2006/02/cartoons.html - discusses the recent Danish cartoons by placing them in an historical context of Euro/America race relations.

“To trace a history of cartoons in Euro-America is to trace a history of race relations…At the turn of the 20th C., Sambo art was in vogue. If one could not own a nigger, one could own a mug, a picture, a doll, an object that featured coal-black skin, bright red lips, and milk-white teeth.”

As the West defends freedom of speech, Gukira writes that people of colour have to ask “freedom for whom” and asks us to remember that lynchings were social occasions.

“Families assembled, complete with their cherubic children. Eager women rushed to take pieces of nigger clothing or skin or hair as souvenirs.”

Black Looks - http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2006/02/dorothy_akenova.html - comments on a BBC programme called IChallenge which interviews an amazingly progressive Nigerian activist who has set up an organisation called INCREASE. “The organisation seeks to promote sexual health in the traditional Northern Sharia state of Niger.” INCREASE (International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights) is based in Niger State in the North of Nigeria and was started by Dorothy Aken’Ova, who writes:

“I believe in equal rights. I challenge the injustices, the discriminatory practices, all forms of inequalities that exist in Nigerian society, especially those that are fuelled by differences in gender and sexuality and especially sexual orientation.”

In addition to INCREASE, Ms Aken’Ova started a group for young gays, lesbians and transgenders in Abuja called IConnect which provides users with a supportive environment and opportunities to network with each other.

The NRM has written to a US-based Internet firm to block access to the www.radiokatwe.com website. NRM spokesperson Ofwono Opondo last week said the website was publishing malicious and false information against the party and its presidential candidate. It has also asked local ISPs to block the site. The New Vision received complaints that the site was inaccessible within Uganda. When opening the site, a message pops up saying, “The page cannot be displayed.” The site hosted in the US features information on presidential candidates, security agencies, operatives and their lifestyles. A liner on the site reads, “Radio Katwe: outrageous, amusing, conspiracy theories, not to be taken seriously.”

It is a whirlwind of desperation for Uganda's energy sector. Pro-longed drought has caused a fall in the level of Lake Victoria; hydro-electricity generation is down by more than 50 percent of installed capacity and power outages has become a daily song. Now some are talking about solar energy. Could it be the last toss of the dice in the current energy crisis? Joseph Olanyo takes a critical look.

UNIFEM's presence in the East and Horn of Africa region has been strengthened with the addition of a new office in Uganda. It was officially opened in February 2006, during a meeting of national partners from government institutions, civil society, academia, the UN system and donor partners. The one-day meeting was organised to seek partners' views on the most effective ways for UNIFEM to carry out its mandate in the Ugandan context, and how best to support the government and civil society partners in meeting commitments to gender equality and women's empowerment.

Campaigning in Uganda’s first multiparty elections in 25 years ended on a tense note on Tuesday, after weeks of political activity marked by several violent clashes between security personnel and supporters of opposition candidate, Kizza Besigye. Thursday’s elections will be monitored by a host of foreign observers. Officials at the electoral commission have indicated that some results may be available on Saturday.

On the campaign trail, Uganda's presidential candidates have ventured where they rarely go, deep into war-ravaged northern Uganda, where the votes of hundreds of thousands of displaced people could make or break their bid for the highest office in the land. As many as 10.4 million voters will go to the polls on 23 February to elect a president and legislators in the first multiparty elections in Uganda in 25 years.
Related Links:
* Uganda: Human Rights Watch letter to Election Observers
http://allafrica.com/stories/200602200001.html
* Uganda: Poll violence worries observers
http://allafrica.com/stories/200602211183.html

President Yoweri Museveni has said he is ready to hand over power if he loses the February 23 presidential poll. "I will give out the keys officially when elections are well conducted and I lose. I will even support the winner," Museveni said while appearing on a Radio talk show recently. Museveni was allaying fears raised that he may not gracefully quit if he loses.

On Friday 3rd February 2006, Uganda Women's Network (UWONET) spearheaded the launch of the Women's Manifesto 2006 at Hotel Africana, Kampala. The document seeks to give women a common platform for addressing crucial concerns of women in Uganda through helping more of them to take up leadership positions in politics, especially Parliament. UWONET's main mission is to promote networking and attain collective vision and action among different actors working towards development and the transformation of the unequal gender relations in society.

Three people were killed and several others injured when a soldier opened fire into a crowd that was waiting for opposition leader Kizza Besigye at Bulange, Mengo. Police confirmed two people were killed and four injured, but eyewitnesses said a third person had died on the way to hospital.

WOUGNET in Uganda was one of the organisers of a conference in mid-December, on a post-World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) consolidation for Uganda. Held on December 14, 2005, the conference was co-organised by the Uganda Communication Commission, I-network, Collegium for Development Studies and Uppsala University of Sweden. Overall, the Uganda conference aimed at strengthening what happened at WSIS and finding a concrete way forward to meet the WSIS targets at the national level. Specially, by way of establishing national priorities and benchmarks.

Personal attacks among election candidates have relegated bread-and-butter issues to the backseat days before Ugandans vote in the country's first multiparty election in 26 years. With 38 per cent of the population living in abject poverty, 1.6 million people displaced from their homes by the war in the north of the country, biting unemployment in the urban areas, industries bleeding over power blackouts and international concerns over democracy and the rule of law, there are enough issues to define the February 23 Ugandan election.

Uganda's first multiparty elections in two decades, scheduled for 23 February, are unlikely to be free and fair due to state intimidation of the opposition and voters, according to a leading human rights group. New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), in a report entitled "In Hope and Fear: Uganda’s Presidential and Parliamentary Polls", said the run-up to the polls had "been marred by intimidation of the opposition, military interference in the courts and bias in campaign funding and media coverage."

Akina Mama wa Afrika (AMwA) is relocating its Head Office to Kampala, Uganda. AMwA is seeking an Executive Director, who will oversee the relocation from UK to Uganda, and lead the organisation through the next phase of its development from the head office in Uganda. The UK office will continue to carry out programmes in UK/Europe as a regional office.