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Uganda opposition to challenge election in court

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 February 2006, 06:49 CST

By Daniel Wallis

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda's main opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party said on Tuesday it would mount a legal challenge to election results that extended President Yoweri Museveni's two-decade rule.

The FDC accuses the government of widespread rigging and bribery at last week's polls, and says hundreds of thousands of its voters' names were deleted from electoral registers.

"We reiterate our decision to reject the results ... we have now set up a legal team to contest these results in court," defeated FDC presidential candidate Kizza Besigye told reporters at his party's headquarters in the capital Kampala.

This is the second election running that Besigye, 49, has challenged the results. In 2001 he tried and failed in the Supreme Court to overturn Museveni's victory and fled into exile in South Africa, saying state agents were trying to kill him.

Final results of Thursday's poll, announced on Saturday, gave the president 59 percent of votes to Besigye's 37 percent.

As word spread, hundreds of FDC supporters protested -- before being driven off the streets by police firing tear gas.

Museveni's ruling Movement party has dismissed the opposition as "bad losers" who were ignoring the verdict of international observer missions that broadly endorsed the poll.

"Don't add to your mistakes," the president warned FDC leaders on Sunday in his first comments after being re-elected.

"Accept the constitutional process, continue organizing your party -- because you are now allowed -- and then submit yourself again in five years time," he said.

"Don't try to waste our time, because you will not go far."

"INTIMIDATION"

Far from conceding, Besigye said on Tuesday the FDC now had "a lot of evidence" that the results had been falsified.

He said the FDC was still compiling its own tally and within a few days it hoped to have figures from 90 percent of Uganda's almost 20,000 polling stations.

The FDC leader rubbished Museveni's warning that some in the opposition had been planning violence if they did not win.

"The claims by the government and security forces are meant to prepare the ground for further intimidation, harassment and arrest of our supporters and leaders," he said.

"FDC is a registered political party and we are committed to working through legal and constitutional means to achieve the desired changes in this country."

Uganda's first multi-party polls for a quarter of a century were closely watched in the West as a test of African democracy and for the signal it might send to others in the region who also enjoy lengthy stays in power.

Critics say 62-year-old Museveni, who comes from a rural cattle-keeping family, has become yet another autocratic African "Big Man" since taking power after a 1981-86 bush war.

Western donors once praised him as the leader of a new generation of African statesmen. But they were disappointed last year when parliament scrapped term limits that barred him from standing. Then they were shocked, and some cut millions in aid, when Besigye was jailed on treason and rape charges.

The FDC leader was Museveni's doctor in the bush war. He was arrested in November, and was freed on bail last month.

The two men have not spoken in seven years.

Source: REUTERS

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