Uganda: Main opposition candidate arrested on election day

Further complicating the vote, opposition candidate Kizza Besigye was detained in the area of Kasangati near the capital, Kampala, on Thursday, local police told CNN.

Kizza Besigye was arrested in the Kampala suburb of Naguru, where he had gone to investigate alleged ballot-stuffing in a house run by the intelligence agencies, said Shawn Mubiru, who is in charge of communications for Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party.

The police did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile opposition leader Amama Mbabazi, a former prime minister and ruling party stalwart, said there were reports of “pre-ticked ballots” in favour of Museveni and candidates from his NRM party.

Mr Museveni, 71, came to power in 1986 after waging a five-year guerrilla war and many Ugandans credit him with providing relative peace and economic stability. The election is considered to be the country’s most competitive since the beginning of the multiparty democracy 10 years ago.

Thursday is election day in Uganda, but it’s not easy for voters to tweet about it or update their Facebook pages – the government has shut down social media, calling the move a “security measure”.

Voting has closed in many polling stations despite delays in delivering ballot papers to many centres in the morning.

She visited two voting stations where voting had been cancelled because people had said they received fake ballots. For its part, the country’s Electoral Commission has promised a free and fair election.

Opinion polls before the election showed Museveni with a comfortable lead, although opposition figures have questioned the polls’ reliability. We are dealing with the gunmen around us, the people are panicking and they have messed up the whole election.

Virginia lawmakers are considering whether to keep the names of police officers secret from the news media and public.

Mr Besigye is Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni’s main challenger in the polls. President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda is running for re-election after 30 years in power – and there is no real doubt about the outcome of this contest. The head of the Commonwealth Observer Group, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, called the long delays “absolutely inexcusable”.

The raid represented a “restriction on the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly”, said Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty International’s regional director.

He added that anyone threatening election violence would be “put in the freezer” to cool down.

A Ugandan woman casts her vote at a polling station located at a school in Kampala, Uganda, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2016.

“He has to change things like health, hospitals and roads”, Karim said, as he waited for a polling station to open in Kampala.

However, while casting his vote in Rwakitura in western Uganda late afternoon, incumbent President Museveni explained that social media was taken down on the pretext of a temporary security measure because some people allegedly used the platform as a “way to tell lies”.

Others complained that it was due to the elections, as they too had problems accessing WhatsApp, an instant messaging service with more than 1 billion member worldwide.

“I think the delay is so some of us quit and go away as a result”, he said.