Off the ballot, Ugandan president's son waits in the wings this election

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — One figure looms large ahead of Uganda's elections Thursday, although he is not on the ballot: the president's son and military commander, Muhoozi Kainerugaba.

Kainerugaba, long believed to be the eventual successor, stood down for his father, President Yoweri Museveni, who is seeking a seventh term that would bring him closer to five decades in power.

Yet Kainerugaba, a four-star general, remains a key figure in Ugandan politics as the chief enforcer of his father’s rule in this east African country. He is the top military commander, appointed by his father nearly two years ago after Kainerugaba told a political rally he was ready to lead.

Kainerugaba’s appointment as army chief put his political campaign on hold — a least, critics say, for as long as Museveni still wants to stay.

Many Ugandans are now resigned to the prospect of hereditary rule, once vehemently denied by government officials who said claims of a secret “Muhoozi Project” for leadership were false and malicious.

Kainerugaba himself has been honest about his presidential hopes since at least 2023 and openly says he expects to succeed his father.

“I will be President of Uganda after my father,” he said in 2023, writing on social platform X. “Those fighting the truth will be very disappointed.”

Military rise

The president’s son is more powerful than ever, his allies strategically deployed in command positions across the security services. As the presumed heir to the presidency, he is the recipient of loyalty pledges from candidates seeking minor political offices.

Kainerugaba joined the army in the late 1990s, and his fast rise to the top of the armed forces proved controversial.

In February 2024, a month before Kainerugaba was named army chief, the president officially delegated some of his authority as commander-in-chief to the head of the military.

Exercising authority previously reserved for the president, including promoting army officers of high rank and creating new army departments, Kainerugaba is more powerful than any army chief before him, said Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a political historian at Uganda’s Makerere University, adding that family rule appears inevitable.

“Honestly, I don’t see a way out through constitutional means,” he said.

Elections, he said, “is just wasting time, legitimizing authority but not intended as a democratic goal... Any change from Museveni will be determined by the military high command.”

Personality cult

With Museveni not saying when he would retire, a personality cult around Kainerugaba has emerged. Some Ugandans stage public celebrations of his birthday. Campaign posters of many seeking parliamentary seats often feature the emblem of Kainerugaba’s political group, the Patriotic League of Uganda. Speaker of Parliament Anita Among last year called Kainerugaba “God the Son."

The speaker's comments underscored the political rise of Kainerugaba in a country where the military is the most powerful institution and Museveni has no recognizable successors in the upper ranks of his party, the National Resistance Movement.

Some believe Kainerugaba is poised to take over in the event of a disorderly transition from Museveni, who is 81. One critic, ruminating on Kainerugaba’s military rank, has been urging the son to depose his father.

“I have endlessly appealed to Muhoozi Kainerugaba to, at least, pretend to coup his dad, become the opposition hero, and accuse the old man of all the crimes the general Kampala public accuses him of,” Yusuf Serunkuma, an academic and independent analyst, wrote in the local Observer newspaper last year.

“Sadly, Kainerugaba hasn’t heeded my calls thus far. That he is being pampered by his father to the presidency doesn’t look good at all.”

Kainerugaba’s supporters say he is humble in private and critical of the corruption that has plagued the Museveni government. They also say he offers Uganda the opportunity of a peaceful transfer of political power in a country that has not had one since independence from British colonial rule in 1962.

Threats and repression

In addition to opposing family rule, his critics point out that Kainerugaba has behaved badly in recent years as the author of often-offensive tweets.

He has threatened to behead Bobi Wine, a presidential candidate who is the most prominent opposition figure in Uganda. He has said the opposition figure Kizza Besigye, jailed over alleged treason charges, should be hanged "in broad daylight” for allegedly plotting to kill Museveni. And he has appeared to confound even his father, who briefly removed him from his military duties in 2022 when Kainerugaba threatened on X to capture the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in two weeks.

Wine said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that Kainerugaba's army "has largely taken over the election.” Wine said his supporters are the victims of violence, including beatings, perpetrated by soldiers.

In its most recent dispatch ahead of voting, Amnesty International said the security forces were engaging in a “brutal campaign of repression.” It cited one event at a rally by Wine’s party, the National Unity Platform, in eastern Uganda on Nov. 28, when one man died after the military blocked an exit and open fired on the crowd.

It was not possible to get a comment from Kainerugaba, who rarely gives interviews.

Frank Gashumba, a Kainerugaba ally and vice chairman of the Patriotic League of Uganda, said Wine was exaggerating the threat against him. “Nobody is touching him,” he said. “He’s lacking the limelight.”

The rare dissenter

Only one senior member of the president’s party has publicly pushed back against hereditary rule.

Kahinda Otafiire, a retired major general who is among those who were by Museveni’s side when he first took power by force after a guerrilla war in 1986, has urged Kainerugaba to seek leadership on his own merits rather than as his father’s son.

“If you say so-and-so’s son should take over from the father, his son will also want to take over from his grandfather. Then there will be Sultan No. 1, Sultan No. 2, and then the whole essence of democracy, for which we fought, will be lost," Otafiire, who serves as Uganda's interior minister, told local broadcaster NBS last year.

"Let there be fair competition, including Gen. Muhoozi. Let him prove to Ugandans that he is capable, not as Museveni’s son but as he, Muhoozi, who is competent to manage the country.”

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