Uganda is heading into the 2026 general elections fully aware that the game is rigged, yet pretending that participation alone will somehow produce a different result. At the center of this national self-deception stands the Uganda Electoral Commission, chaired by Simon Byabakama, an institution that has long ceased to inspire confidence among voters, opposition candidates, or even casual observers of Ugandan politics.
This brutal reality was openly acknowledged by opposition leader Bobi Wine when he told a rally in Masaka that he would not be declared winner by Byabakama even if he secured 90 percent of the vote.
That statement should have stopped the entire electoral conversation in its tracks. If a leading contestant knows in advance that votes do not determine outcomes, why is the country being mobilised for another election? Are Ugandans being called to change power, or merely to authenticate a process already decided elsewhere?
Worse still, such statements risk normalising electoral theft by preparing citizens psychologically for defeat before the first ballot is cast. When leaders publicly declare that the referee will cheat yet insist on playing the match, suspicion naturally grows. Are these elections a genuine struggle for change, or a carefully managed performance that launders an illegitimate process into something that resembles consent?
What makes the current outrage ring hollow is that Uganda once had a chance to confront this problem head-on—and deliberately walked away from it. In 2023, Mathias Mpuuga Nsamba, President of the Democratic Front, tabled serious electoral reforms in Parliament.
The proposals sought to clip the President’s powers over the Electoral Commission, remove the army and police from elections, and require district-level declaration of presidential results to curb manipulation at the center. These were not abstract ideals; they were practical safeguards against exactly the fraud being complained about today.
Yet the National Unity Platform, the leading opposition force, refused to back these reforms. Its leadership chose to sell hope over structure, miracles over institutions, assuring Ugandans that sheer numbers at the ballot would overpower a system designed specifically to neutralise numbers. Today, the same voices cry foul, as though the outcome was unforeseeable. It was not. It was warned against and ignored.
Meanwhile, rumours that the regime will simply declare candidates of its choosing, votes notwithstanding, are not conspiracies; they are consistent with history. From the Nansana parliamentary race in 2016, to the Kayunga LC5 by-election in 2022, to the Buikwe Woman MP race in 2021, to various Kampala local council races, the pattern has been painfully clear.
Candidates whose victories were supported by declaration forms were replaced at the announcement stage. Evidence emerged, outrage followed, and then nothing. No sustained resistance, no national reckoning, no consequences.
This culture of surrender has emboldened a system that no longer feels the need to hide. Reports that Electoral Commission agents may sign fabricated declaration forms and operate independently of voters are terrifying not because they are new, but because they sound entirely plausible. Impunity thrives where citizens protest loudly and then retreat quietly.
The greater failure, however, lies within the opposition itself. To know the system is compromised, reject reforms that could restrain it, promise miracles instead, and then mobilise citizens into another likely stolen election is political dishonesty of the highest order. Courage is not measured by crowds at rallies, but by the willingness to fight for rules that make elections meaningful before asking people to vote.
As 2026 approaches, Uganda must decide whether elections are tools for change or rituals of false hope. Voting without reform is not bravery; it is participation in a lie. Unless citizens and political leaders confront the system—rather than emotionally outsourcing resistance to polling day, the inevitable question after the next election will not be who won, but why Ugandans once again allowed themselves to be marched into a trap they fully understood.
By Kaweesa Kaweesa
Chairman, Democratic Front – Mukono District
