Rock the Vote

It's finally here, after months of build-up and speculation and yellow NRM t-shirts and pickup trucks with massive speakers driving around endlessly blasting ear splitting music: election day.

So far, so quiet, which means so far, so good. I just spoke with my neighbor who'd just returned from voting in town. He said the line was long, but orderly, and that seems to be the case around the country.

Here's an article from the New York Times with a short background on the election, current president Yoweri Museveni and his twenty-five (and counting?) year time in power and his ridiculous hat, and why Uganda probably won't turn into Egypt in the next few days.

"On Friday, Mr. Museveni, a close American ally whose relatively small nation gets hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid, faces re-election, seeking his fifth consecutive stint as president. By all measures — polls, diplomatic analyses, even taxi-driver talk — he is expected to win.
But while Uganda shares many of the same, combustible conditions that have fueled popular uprisings in the Arab world — grinding poverty, masses of jobless, students glued to Facebook and a leader who refuses to step down after more than two decades in power — few here expect widespread upheaval."

That's the gist of the article, and probably how the election's going to turn out, for better or worse -- but mostly likely for more of the same.