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KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) \u2014 The health of jailed Ugandan opposition figure Kizza Besigye is failing, his party said on Tuesday, after he was driven overnight to a medical facility in the capital of Kampala.<\/p>\n
Besigye’s health \u201chas reached a critical and deteriorating state,\u201d the People’s Front for Freedom said in a statement that also demanded unrestricted access to Besigye by his personal doctors and family.<\/p>\n
Besigye, a veteran politician who was Uganda’s most prominent opposition figure before the rise of Bobi Wine<\/a>, is being detained in a maximum-security jail in Kampala. He is set to be tried over treason charges he says are politically motivated.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is a tragedy that a man who has dedicated his life to the health and freedom of others is being denied his own right to medical dignity,\u201d said the statement by the People’s Front for Freedom. \u201cWe hold the regime and the prison authorities fully accountable for his well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n Frank Baine, a spokesman for Uganda’s prison system, denied that Besigye was in failing health. \u201cIt was a general checkup,\u201d he said of Besigye’s overnight trip to see a doctor. “This morning he was doing his exercises.\u201d<\/p>\n Besigye last contested the presidency in 2016. He said afterwards that elections were a waste of time in a country with an authoritarian leader whose authority depends on the armed forces.<\/p>\n President Yoweri Museveni<\/a>, who has held power since 1986, was on Saturday declared the winner of last week’s presidential election. Museveni took 71.6% of the vote while his closest challenger, Wine, took 24.7% of the vote, according to official results that Wine rejected as fake.<\/p>\n The election was marred by a days-long internet shutdown and the failure of biometric voter identification machines, long demanded by pro-democracy activists to curb voting offenses such as ballot stuffing.<\/p>\n Museveni, 81, has stayed in power over the years by rewriting the rules. The last legal obstacles to his rule \u2014 term limits and age restrictions \u2014 have been removed from the constitution, and some of his possible rivals have been jailed or sidelined.<\/p>\n Besigye, a physician who retired from Uganda\u2019s military at the rank of colonel, is a former president of the Forum for Democratic Change party, for many years Uganda\u2019s most prominent opposition group. He has long been a fierce critic of Museveni, for whom he once served as a military assistant and personal doctor.<\/p>\n