Ugandan Pop Star Bobi Wine Cleared to Run for President

Addis Ababa, September 25, 2025 (ENA)— Ugandan opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, has been cleared to run in the presidential election scheduled in January, the country’s Electoral Commission has confirmed a week after rejecting his initial submission.

During the last election in 2021, Wine secured 35 percent of the vote while Museveni won with 58 percent – his poorest margin of victory since taking power.

Museveni, 81, who has governed since 1986, received clearance on Tuesday to seek another term that could extend his rule to nearly half a century.

“Our country is one of the richest on the planet in natural resources … our problem is lack of leadership—leadership that serves the people instead of terrorizing and exploiting them,” Wine said after Uganda’s electoral chief confirmed his candidacy in Kampala.

Wine’s National Unity Platform (NUP) has long accused authorities of abducting, illegally detaining and torturing its supporters, it was learned.

Government officials deny systematic abuses and say arrests are made only on credible suspicions of crimes.

 In January, Muhoozi Kainerugaba—Museveni’s son and the military’s top commander—threatened to behead Wine, and in May he said he had confined a missing NUP official in his basement while issuing further threats.

Dozens of NUP members remain behind bars on what the party calls politically motivated charges.

Branding himself the “Ghetto President,” Wine argues he speaks for Uganda’s youth, the unemployed and working poor.

“We are fighting for a better Uganda—for farmers, for graduates without jobs, for the ghetto youth whose future is being stolen,” he said.