President Yoweri Museveni scored a landslide victory in Uganda’s first presidential election in 16 years, winning a popular mandate for the position he seized as a rebel leader a decade earlier. Stephen Akabway, head of the Interim Electoral Commission, announced to cheers at the International Conference Centre in Kampala, that Museveni had won 4,428,119 votes, or 74.2 per cent. He said main opposition candidate Paul Ssemogerere took 1,416,139 or 23.7 per cent of valid votes cast while third candidate Mohammad Mayanja won 133,290 or about 2.2 per cent of the valid votes. Museveni, 52, fought his way to the presidential palace in 1986 at the end of a five-year bush war following the rigging of the last presidential poll in 1980 which Ssemogerere appeared set to win. He is credited with Uganda’s economic recovery through Western-backed reforms.
Other important events
1812 Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister of Britain, is shot dead in London.
1824 British forces take Rangoon in Burma.
1867 Luxembourg gains independence.
1924 Cartel des Gauches wins French parliamentary election.
1943 US forces land at Attu in the Aleutian Islands in Second World War. It is first American territory regained from Japan.
1944 Allied forces launch a major offensive in central Italy.
1949 Siam changes its name to Thailand.
1955 Giovanni Gronchi becomes president of Italy.
1962 Antonio Segni becomes president of Italy.
1975 Laos Premier Souvanna Phouma concedes communist victory in his country.
1985 56 football fans die as a flash fire sweeps at Bradford stadium in England.
1988 Guatemalan army says it quashed military coup attempt on President Vinicio Cerezo’s civilian government.
1992 Arabs and Israelis begin talks on halting the flood of weapons in the Middle East.
1993 Fire in a Thailand doll factory kills at least 188.
1997 The supercomputer Deep Blue makes chess history when it defeats Garry Kasparov for an overall victory in their six-game re-match,
1998 India conducted three underground nuclear tests in Pokhran, Rajasthan.
1999 Sharjah International Airport’s Dh20 million runway extension project is completed.
2000 Queen Elizabeth II officially opens the Tate Modern art gallery in London.
2007 North and South Korea reach a military agreement enabling the first train to cross their heavily armed border in more than half a century.
2008 Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa hails his party’s election victory in the country’s tense Eastern Province.
2009 American reporter Roxanne Saberi walks out of an Iranian prison after an appeals court invalidates the previous eight-year prison.
2011 David Cameron becomes Britain’s youngest Prime Minister.
2013 At least 40 people are killed after two car bomb exploded in Turkey near Syria border.
2014 Lewis Hamilton makes four wins in a row after winning Spanish Grand Prix.
2015 An Indian court overturns the graft conviction of powerful politician Jayalalitha, setting the stage for her return to power in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
