Would say. Robert check your lawn the pop star turned politician whos known by the stage name bobby wine is recognized as the new face of ugandas off position. But his rise to prominence has not been without its challenges but the winds popularity is considered a threat to president you where emo 70 whos been in office for more than 30 years his government has arrested and prosecuted bobby wind several times and the opposition figure has accused Security Forces of torturing him but the 37 year old is not holding back his ambition in fact hes now directly challenging president was 70 in elections expected to be held in 2021 but will his popularity be enough to get him elected and what are his plans for the way forward ugandas probably wind talks to aljazeera. Probably wind leading opposition a politician from uganda thank you for talking to aljazeera and let me start by asking you to tell us whats wrong with things in uganda right now. I will try to be diplomatic and say many things are wrong but if i was to be real say almost everything is wrong and it all begins with leadership we have what many people describe as a click talk rossy for government which we hope to make better is relatively recent merged on the political scene you were before that of musician why did you decide to go to politics im a musician social activist and get a youth who recently i call it recent but its 2 years ago decided to run and become a member of parliament so was it a Natural Evolution from that to politics or was there a moment that made you decide to get involved in politics i would say it was in not your evolution because initially like any other young man are singing about the cars and the parties and everything but you know over time after realising that you need my music on my lyrics was influencing so many people especially the young people i decided to challenge you to post a video and it was working where however is this one time about 10 or something years ago when i got a pass on i was beaten by my age me and my crime was showing off that is the time when i had just gotten a brand new escalated and he claimed that i was showing off as i didnt know that showing off a flush card showing off a flash card as if i did not know that the country actually had owners that communicated so much about the injustice is that so many people have been going through in my full glare and i decided to make injustice my enemy and that is when i started singing what now the regime calls political music trying to address those injustices however. I reached a time when i realized i could not keep just talking about them through my music and thats why i decided to get into actual politics so awkward. Have a more formal platform in the parliament of uganda to address these issues and thats what ive been doing and youve been an m. P. For 2 years now we have been in the governments targeting of you has continued since youve been an m. P. Not only is your music banned your concerts banned but you have faced attorney told me about the incident when your driver was killed well i say the day i went to parliament that since the parliament refused to come to the ghetto they get a will come to the parliament i wanted to get those issues that the regime the government and those who put that rule over us had ignored for a very long time of course when i got into parliament it brought a lot of attention of the Common People the peak interest in the politics and indeed the static pushing me and suggesting that i run for president now this inferior to the president that we have who has for a long time been regarded as all powerful and i started getting that arcs and the most ferocious attack was the assassination attempt on my life in iraq which took the life of my driver instead of mine and you were arrested after that yeah all have been to you when you were in custody you were tortured me i was tortured i was beaten and humiliated you know the regime planted 2 machine guns on me and the spokesperson of the National Police in uganda actually came out and said those guns were found in my room only to withdraw the charges just a week later that was in 2018 this year again the attacks on you have continued well the attacks on me of continued but not only me and i only say that i feel online to see that my plight is highlighted but this is the same play that so many people are going through or even while us people that unknown people that you will never know about and that is why every opportunity i get i try to shine a light on their plate because i am. Im only representative of what they are going through their talks of continued im a musician but my music scenes effectively been banned in the country i cannot stage in a concert i cannot be allowed to address a public gathering not even in my constituency which elected me to office and yes. More than twice i went to church and the church was tear gassed by the regime because prison in was 70 and the regime that he presided over he saw scared of anybody that communicates words that open the eyes of the people of uganda lets talk about president certainly you were i believe 4 years old when he came to power you probably short dont remember you can do without the 70 and thats a large part of the ugandan population 37 but ive never realistically experienced a uganda with another president and it is more than 80 percent of ugandans that are in the same situation you know and that really gets us disturbed we have been denied. An opportunity to contribute to our country whove been excluded as a new generation and we desire to contribute to building a country which we know we are going to leave in because certainly the people that are making decisions for us are not going to be the to their benefit or suffer from the decisions which are evidently wrong that theyre making for us if you look at the history of uganda since independence from the colonial rulers the british it can really be summed up with 3 names. Mean when you ari was certainly no 2 of those are both mean mean in particular were very very brutal would you accept that when the 70 came to power 1st he rescued your country well that has been stayed weve always been. Hearing that while growing up until we grew up old enough to see with our own eyes and say without fear of contradiction that most seventies rule is much more brutal than the rules that have been there before only that president must have been has been extremely smart and you must give it to him you know the world sees prison him as a van and indeed many people describe him as a benevolent dictator or a dictator in a suit to the western world president s have been has always cast this image of a democrat but back home he has stepped on all rights and all freedoms and he has ruled uganda with an iron fist what do you say to International Investors and to governments to diplomats you who say better the devil you know well to the International Community to the International Investors and to all the organizations that are working with ghana 1st and foremost i want to thank them for always choosing to be friends if you can that theyve supported our Health Care System and yes theyve supported our military but we know that we are also citizens of the wild and what to unite us should not be only business it should be the values that we share together for democracy well is that the respect for human rights and values leg 0 tolerance to corruption so i request them to always hold the Administration Accountable let them make the observation of human rights and the rule of law a precondition for cooperation with you canda so that ultimately the of dealing with uganda note to the detriment of your governance we want the International Community and in particular the United States of america to be dealing with you can and and not with the 70 himself otherwise the United States supports so much of our military operations especially in the fight against terror but do you see that the corruption that is ongoing in uganda and you need the corruption. President 7 him self has caused that aid to again be used to repress the people of all is noted that the gun that was used to extra judiciary execute my driver was an american gun ive interviewed president 73 times in fact hes been on this program sitting in the chair where you are he seems supremely confident do you think hes afraid to talk of losing power the only thing the president must have been scared of is snoozing power and that is way to be in uganda the major preoccupation of their government is their grip on power it explains why a president must have any moves with patches of money just bribing anybody it explains why our police force is reduced to now playing politics other than keeping law and order that it takes planes why the military high ranking military officials are coming out to denounce the pope people or the People Power Movement because do they mean star of Constitutional Affairs is im a soldier and he came out and said we shall fight people power using the military and air force i mean we are only young people that are not armed we are only using words to assert what we want and were not even inciting violence all we are saying is that we want to be regarded as human beings and you know our own home so the desire to maintain the group on power has made president museveni descend down to unimaginable levels the constitution has been changed twice used to say youre only allowed to be president for 2 terms hes now done 5 terms used to say that youre only allowed to be president if youre younger than 75. 00 hell be 76. 00 next time as an election what do you think is the president s plan do you think he plans to rule until he dies or do you think he plans to hand over power to his son or maybe his wife. I wouldnt want to say i think i would want to see i know that president will serve any plans to rule for life and maybe after he days in office probably he wants his son or his wife to take after him which is wrong which is unacceptable which we are going to fight until the end because you can that is not a monarch uganda is a democracy and all you can and should be included in the governance of uganda but most importantly we should be the people of uganda to make the decision you made you talk about our constitution yes our constitution used to provide for that but still our constitution although it has been changed so many times the constitution as it is provides for fundamental rights it provides for the freedom of association it provides for the freedom of speech and all these poor freedoms ive being stepped on. Recently it was on international t. V. When dr king said basically it was bush lies hes a political opponent and myself a political opponent the president was even but i cannot be allowed to have grist any crowd anywhere i cannot even be allowed to access radio or t. V. Stations especially in the countryside why because president museveni is very very scared of the message that would bring is very scared of the fact that 85 percent of the population of uganda is my age and younger his very scared because he see the signs everywhere people are yarning for change. What about his own party the National Resistance movement do you think hes got trouble inside the party too well its very evident that president with 70 has trouble in the party itself i mean even in the People Power Movement we are working with more than 10 members of parliament who actually belong to the ruling party but they see the truth because the truth is constantly being told him by their voters they want change so i believe that the. Wind of change is blowing even in prison in the 70s bedroom perhaps the most important quote from president bush certainly came in his 1st year in office when he wrote a book what africas problem they are quote from that the problem of africa in general and uganda in particular is not the people but leaders who want to over stay in power and i picked him up on that quote when i spoke to him 6 years ago in 2013 on this program and he said no no no staying in power without elections i am in power because of elections so he has been repeatedly reelected president would have been used to say those things when he was around my age that are 4 years later he doesnt want to hear what the seed when you were seized is still in my opinion so bad so theres only one explanation for that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely theres been allegations that previous elections were not free and fair in your view right now is president certainly the legitimate president of uganda where convinced that dr kings have basically won the previous elections. And i would believe that even if 70 could have won the elections the way hes handling the people of uganda mixing hes legitimacy however we are looking at the opportunity of 2002 into one for the ugandans to us that their voices we want to. Do you see a trend in africa i mean look for example zimbabwe look a lot of the parts in north africa. For example do you see a trend that older leaders are now being forced to give up power where we know of change is blowing only those that have decided to cover the eyes they dont see but the wind of change is blowing those of us who are young and now grown who have babies now we have parents we are demanding the right to shape the future for ourselves and our children and will stop at nothing this is not only happening in uganda its happening all over africa you seen what happened in book in a fossil in the past in. What happened recently in sudan it is happening in uganda you mentioned the demographics in your country and how many people are young under 35 because of your music and your own age tell me what the youth of uganda. The youth of uganda i think they want better the youth of uganda i think they want their country back the youth of uganda saying they want a country that equal opportunity to every ugandan where somebody. Is going to be judged by the content of that character note tribe they come from you know who their parents are the youth of uganda i seen it is time is our time. And the next election is 2021 yes you say youre going to stand for president you will you get all of the opposition to come behind you one unified candidate against president and 70 well it is our effort we are in advanced stages discussing different leaders from different groupings and different formations to see that we come together as the opposition well knowing that one big challenge you face is the operation and the limited or shrinking political space given the shrinking political space and the history of the previous elections the 5 president ial elections weve seen which was 71 he has a very tight grip on the system and been persistent allegations of vote rigging how do you overcome that if he risks the election yeah we know the president must have been is planning to read daily he has done that in the past recently in khomeini by election using the military but we are banking on of where i mean him because it was a vote can easily be rigged if its not overwhelming and ultimately if president 70 tries to rig the election then he has been like he has been doing then the people of uganda we rise up and they will stop it let me ask you about what you mean by that because if you are blocked at the ballot box what other ways will you seek to remove most certainly and its worth noting to our viewers that since independence in the 1960 s. The has never been a peaceful transfer of power in uganda the low as it is today permits me to vie for presidency and if president must have any tries to stop me from vying for the presidency that would be another breach that we shall cross when you get there but what you said a moment ago that the people could rise up are you saying there could be an armed revolution against some 70 if your efforts of the by. Box blocked i did not say people could raise up i said people will raise up because that is evident everywhere they are tired of this operation and they will not take it any longer i do not believe in violence so we are using until continue to use only get to mitt and legal ways of defending our voice speaking to one International Diplomat whos actually met you who says bobby wine hes a performer hes fairy charismatic but what does he know about running a country what are going to be your policies if you get rid of president certainly we are looking at breaking a dictatorship and having uganda under civilian rule which has never happened before who want the voice of the people to suppress the voice of the guns we want to return the rule of law and dignity to the iranians and at most respect for human rights want to revive our Education System i mean it is sad that the wife of the president whose education is actually questioned the book is the minister of education and it is so sad the recent happenings in michel university and what she said back at that explains the regime and the family and the couple thats ruling of our us want to revive our Health Care System it is see itself it explains why our government officials our leaders actually never go to our hospitals even when they have to give but they fly to a country to developed countries for treatment while the ugandans i lived to suffer and die that explains why we lose more than 1000 women every day not every week not every month but every day given by more than 300 children die in uganda you know and all these other challenges that people go through if you had a functioning Health Care System would be working uganda is enormously gifted with amazing. Those however the land has been conspicuously owned by one family or one clan or one grouping we want to put an end to that while the Natural Resources of the country to be actually a property and the benefit of the people of uganda we greatly and owed Natural Resources for minerals to oil them to facilitate the people of uganda and help develop us and finally we want to. Unite our country because we live in a deeply divided country divided by laying along ethnicity along class along income along political line in we want to put a name to that and that we need us to have 2000 and Reconciliation Program that can bring our people together so we can have a. Foundation that will take us together forward as a country and most importantly i know that many of our very resourceful knowledgeable educated and intelligent people have been forced to leave uganda becau