Idi Amin's son uses election to clear his family name
THE son of Idi Amin, the Ugandan dictator whose brutal regime led to more than half a million deaths in the 1970s, stood in a municipal election in the country yesterday as part of an attempt to rehabilitate the family name.
Votes were being counted last night to see whether Haji Ali Amin had been elected mayor in the town of Njeru, about 50 miles east of the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
During the campaign Haji Ali claimed that locals were no longer scared of the Amin name, in spite of his father's eccentric rule, which included reported incidents of cannibalism, and ruined the economy of the former British colony.
"The people don't have any problem with my father," Haji Ali said, blaming the media for portraying the former dictator in a bad light.
The election forms part of a continuing rehabilitation process. There have been reports that Idi Amin 79, who fled Uganda in 1979, is planning to return from exile in Saudi Arabia.
Last year, Kivumbi Amule, his younger brother, said the exiled dictator had told him he wanted to "return to his country to stay with his people".
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