Ugandan pop star and opposition candidate Bobi Wine says he has been beaten, tasered and attacked with teargas and pepper spray while campaigning against long-serving President Yoweri Museveni.

Now 43, and nearly a decade into his political career, violence on the campaign trail, comes as no surprise to a man who has built his political identity on uncompromising opposition to what he calls Museveni’s “dictatorship”.

Wine, whose legal name is Robert Kyagulanyi, is not widely thought to have any chance of winning Thursday’s election against a President who has been in power since 1986, when Wine was just three.

But by mobilising millions of disenchanted young Ugandans in his second bid for the presidency, Wine has emerged as Museveni’s most formidable challenger in years, at a time when the 81 year old Museveni is thought to be planning his succession.

“Every time we go through this treacherous atmosphere and we get to the people, it’s like a breath of fresh air,” Wine told Reuters this month.

“The knowledge that the regime is actually doing this to ‘break my back’, that they’re doing this to demoralize us, we choose to deliberately not stop, just to show them that we can keep going.”

The government has said the security forces intervened only when Wine supporters violated campaign rules by blocking traffic or holding events outside prescribed times.

–Reuters–