Uganda Pop-Star Bobi Wine Says Opposition Seeks Single Candidate
- Bobi Wine hopes to run as presidential candidate in 2021 vote
- Incumbent Museveni likely to try and rig the outcome, he says
Bobi Wine addresses supporters outside his recording studio in Kampala on Oct. 31.
Photographer: Luke Dray/Getty ImagesRobert Kyagulanyi, the Ugandan pop star turned politician who goes by the stage name Bobi Wine, said he is in advanced talks with opposition parties to field a single presidential candidate in 2021 elections against Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled the east African country since 1986.
Wine, the 37-year-old reggae singer who says at least 157 of his concerts have been canceled by the government, said he hopes to be the candidate as Uganda has a young population. He is in talks with Kizza Besigye, Museveni’s one-time physician who has run for president unsuccessfully four times.
“If we as opposition come together it will be more or less game over” for Museveni, Wine said on the sidelines of a press conference in Johannesburg where he was receiving an award from Germany’s Friedrich Naumann Foundation. “We hope to agree on a single candidate,” he said, adding that young Ugandans are urging him to run.