By Arthur Tumwesigye
The highly anticipated election day came and went, but the outcome is still undecided.
President Yoweri Museveni was re-elected by the majority of the voters, but Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, through his lawyers, has run to the Supreme Court to prove that it was he, not Museveni, as the victor.
Bobi Wine has not accepted the results of a vote that brought 61 directly elected members of his newly formed political party to the 11th parliament.
Ninety-five per cent of NUP MPs are representing constituencies in the central region where their principle performed well despite the absence of his polling agents at most of the polling stations.
Failure to acknowledge the results of an election has been widely embraced opposition tactic across Africa. This is to deliberately create a false belief among the electorate that their victory was stolen, for them to remain relevant to their funders and of course raising their rate card in case the elected Government is interested in a coalition.
Unfortunately, these unjustifiable voter fraud and bribery accusations create an overwrought situation among the electorate which instigates the throttling malfeasance comportment among the electorate and can possibly lead to an insurrection.
Bobi Wine has skillfully executed this tactic of false denial and unfortunately, many of his supporters, including those who know the truth have believed and popularized these claims.
On CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, host Jake Tapper described the attack on the US Capitol as the logical result of weeks of lies repeated by politicians and members of the media that were supporting former us President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the November election.
Tapper said the idea that the election had been ‘stolen’ took root among the president’s supporters as if they had been infected by the virus.
“This Virus is the big lie, the big lie that the election was stolen, spread by the president and his allies,” Tapper said.
This quote encapsulates the electoral voter fraud claim by the opposition in Africa.
The November protests were a quintessential explanation for the false claims and assumptions fueled by political extremists who mythologized surreal and false castigation to tint the Government as a scoundrel and ungovernable in the eyes of the electorate and their funders.
In a desperate move, from the Electoral Commission, they have now turned their guns to the Media, accusing them of not reporting to their favor, and according to them, aiding the incumbent to win.
This is simply shooting themselves in the foot because their lies had earlier been propagated through these same Media platforms during the campaign period.
Their ravenous appetite for publicity has prompted a strong sense of entitlement substituting brains with brawn and disregarding the fundamental principles of journalism.
The Writer is a Student of Media and National Security
