In a world that refuses to stop spinning despite every rational reason to do so, Yoweri Museveni has once again emerged from the Ugandan electoral theater clutching a seventh term like a toddler refuses to let go of a sticky toy. At 81 years of age, Museveni isn’t just a president; he is a geological epoch. While the rest of the species experiences the biological reality of aging and the eventual surrender of power, Museveni has opted for a more traditional approach: simply declaring everyone else a terrorist and turning off the lights. It’s a classic move, really. If you can’t win an argument on merit, simply accuse your opponent of plotting to blow up the stadium and then cut the power so no one can record your victory dance.

The official tally, delivered with the kind of unblinking confidence one usually reserves for cult leaders and used car salesmen, claims Museveni secured 72% of the vote. It’s a delightful number, isn't it? It’s high enough to signal absolute dominance but low enough to pretend that some vestige of dissent was allowed to breathe—just before it was smothered with a pillow. To achieve this statistical miracle, the Museveni administration employed the most sophisticated tool in the modern autocrat’s toolkit: the internet blackout. There is something profoundly poetic about a leader who claims to represent the future of a nation while being terrified of a tweet. By severing the digital nervous system of the country, the regime ensured that the only narrative allowed to circulate was the one authorized by the man who hasn’t seen a peer-to-peer competition he couldn’t suppress since the Reagan administration.

Following the announcement, Museveni took to the airwaves to describe his opponents as 'terrorists' who attempted to use violence to overturn the results. It is the ultimate rhetorical get-out-of-jail-free card. In the lexicon of the modern strongman, 'terrorist' is simply shorthand for 'anyone under the age of forty who wants a job or a different face on their currency.' It is a branding exercise designed to justify the heavy-handed repression that observers and rights groups have, in their predictably limp-wristed fashion, described as 'concerning.' One must admire the efficiency of it. If you treat the opposition like a paramilitary cell, you don’t have to engage with their policy platforms; you just have to deploy the armored vehicles. It’s much cleaner than actual debate, which involves the pesky inconvenience of having to be coherent.

Naturally, the international community responded with its usual choreographed display of 'deep concern.' African election observers and global rights groups issued their reports, which will undoubtedly be filed in the same circular bin where all such reports go to die. The Left will perform its usual dance of moral outrage, tweeting from the safety of London or DC about the 'erosion of democracy,' while the Right will quietly calculate whether Museveni’s continued grip on power provides enough 'stability' to protect their interests in the region. Both sides are, as usual, entirely useless. They view the stifling of Ugandan civil society as a plot point in their own ideological dramas, rather than the slow, grinding tragedy of a nation being held hostage by a man who views himself as the state’s only possible architect.

Museveni’s victory is not a triumph of policy; it is a triumph of endurance. He has outlasted logic, he has outlasted his own promises of liberation, and he is currently outlasting the patience of a generation that has never known another leader. The irony of a former guerrilla leader, who once railed against the dictators of the past, now characterizing his own citizens as insurgents for the crime of voting is a level of hypocrisy that would be impressive if it weren't so mundane. It is the inevitable trajectory of the liberator: you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself turn off the internet so you can win a seventh term in the dark.

We are expected to treat this as a functioning political process, but it is actually a funeral for the idea of progress. When an 81-year-old man looks at a nation of youth and sees nothing but 'terrorists,' it is clear that the only thing being protected is a legacy that has long since curdled into a pathology. The 72% victory is a hollow shell, a number generated in a vacuum, validated by silence, and enforced by the very violence Museveni claims to oppose. But why should we expect anything else? Humanity’s capacity for self-delusion is infinite, and as long as there are leaders willing to trade a nation's future for another five years of sitting on a gold-trimmed chair, the theater will continue. Museveni wins again, the lights stay off, and the world moves on to the next disaster, bored by the predictability of a man who refuses to leave the stage even after the audience has gone home.