Uganda's incumbent President Yoweri Museveni has been declared the winner of the 2021 presidential elections after scooping 58.64 percent of the votes, the country's electoral body said today. However, the results have been disputed by his main rival Robert Kyagulanyi.
Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, and fiercest rival to Museveni only garnered about 35% of the vote, with the remaining votes distributed amongst eight other presidential candidates.
"The electoral commission declares Yoweri Museveni elected President of the Republic of Uganda," Justice Simon Mugenyi Byabakama, chairperson of the election commission in Uganda said on Saturday.
Mugenyi further hailed the vote as having been peaceful and called on Bobi Wine, who said some of his polling agents were arrested on Thursday, to make public the evidence for his fraud allegations.
76-year-old Museveni, who has been the country's president since 1986, will now take on his sixth-term in office.
However, 38-year-old Wine who was banking on the votes of thousands of young people in the country rejected the results, saying the vote was rigged.
"We are the real winners of this election and therefore what the electoral commission announced has nothing to do with the real election that took place. I can call on all Ugandans to reject the announcement that has been made by the electoral commission, to reject them with the contempt with which it deserves," he told CNN.
Wine has also vowed to provide evidence of rigging, although the electoral commission dismissed the claims.
His National Unity Platform will be the biggest opposition party in parliament.