THE Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, was re-elected yesterday after the country’s first multi-party election for more than two decades — but the result was rejected by the opposition amid claims of voter intimidation and fraud.

Museveni, 62, who has ruled Uganda since taking power after the country’s 1981-86 “bush war”, won 59% of the vote in Thursday’s poll, according to official figures, compared with 37% for Kizza Besigye, 49, the main opposition candidate.

Besigye’s party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which had been hoping to force Museveni into a second-round run-off, said it did not accept the figures. Sam Akaki, a spokesman for the group, said: “This election was as free and fair as it would have been under Saddam or Hitler.”

As the president’s supporters danced in the streets, police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of FDC voters protesting outside their party’s headquarters. “They will pay for this,” said one. “Museveni’s people are pushing us to war.” Besigye appealed for calm.

Ofwono Opondo, a spokesman for the president’s ruling Movement party, yesterday dismissed opposition claims of election fraud. “They are bad losers,” he said.

Once hailed by western leaders as a beacon of hope for democracy in Africa and showered with millions of pounds of aid — much of it from Britain — Museveni has displayed increasingly authoritarian tendencies in recent years. He changed the constitution in July to allow him to run for a third term as president.

Besigye, once Museveni’s personal physician, said he was subjected to a campaign of harassment orchestrated by the government to sully his name and prevent him fighting the election effectively.

He was arrested at the end of last year and has since made 27 separate court appearances on one charge of rape and two of treason. Britain responded by withdrawing £15m in aid.

The two men are also bitter personal rivals. Besigye is married to a former mistress of the president, who threatened to disclose Museveni’s marital shortcomings unless he reined in the men harassing her husband during the campaign.

In the weeks before the election, the armed forces — over which the president exerts considerable influence — were accused of violent attacks on opposition supporters.

On election day a close aide of the president who was apparently in charge of security in one district was caught on camera brandishing an AK-47 over a group of men who had been stripped and made to lie on the ground. There were also widespread allegations of fraud, with many people complaining that their names had vanished from registers of voters.

Max van den Berg, a Dutch MEP who headed the European Union’s team of observers, said Museveni’s use of state funds to pay for his campaign, biased coverage on state television and Besigye’s frequent court appearances had meant “a lack of a level playing field”.

Fears of election violence prompted Rwanda to close its border with Uganda. The Ugandan army has been put on standby to quell protests.

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