Blake Lambert – Correspondent

A percussive chant filled my ears as I edged toward the swarm of Ugandans on Kampala Road, the unavoidable path of all political demonstrations in Uganda's capital, Kampala.

"Besigye, candidate," they jubilantly shouted and danced.

A few ecstatic souls even laid a poster of Kizza Besigye, presidential candidate for the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), on the not-so-clean street and kissed it.

Dozens of police, including some in riot gear, and red-capped military police eyed the crowd suspiciously.

After weeks of legal wrangling between civilian and military courts since his Nov. 14 arrest for treason, Mr. Besigye, who presents the most credible challenge to President Yoweri Museveni in the Feb. 23 presidential election, had gained his freedom on bail.

Thousands of Ugandans wanted to show Besigye their support.

"If we didn't love Besigye, we wouldn't even be here," John Bosco Omara, a self-employed printer.

He complained about too much corruption, sectarianism, poverty, and Museveni's failure to stop the Lord's Resistance Army, a brutal rebel group in northern Uganda.

The riot squad stood maybe 15 feet from where we talked.

A few minutes earlier, I watched one of its members threaten someone who was handing out water to demonstrators who had been tear-gassed so they could wash their eyes.

"You give them more water. You will see what will happen," the policeman snapped.

That blue-tinged tear gas, fired from a mobile cannon, carries a fierce sting, far worse than any variety I'd encountered before in Kampala.

I too needed water to clear my eyes.

Oddly, getting hosed down by the water cannon, as also happened to demonstrators and observers, seemed, to me, to be more benign.

As I walked along the street with Ugandan colleagues, I saw a military policeman use a wooden baton to beat a demonstrator.

It all seemed a bit harsh given that the celebratory crowd didn't appear to pose a threat to anyone either.

At one point, I swiveled my head and watched endless waves of people moving along Kampala Road.

Even when Besigye finally emerged from the High Court sitting atop a car and flashing his two-fingered victory salute, supporters wanted to follow their man back to FDC headquarters.

From 1986 to 1996, one of them told me, crowds of this size would meet Museveni wherever he went and whomever he was with.

A decade later, a growing number of Ugandans wonder why their president doesn't seem ready to emulate his colleagues in East Africa and leave power peacefully, as Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania has done.

No amount of tear gas or water can erase the doubts about Museveni, but using them often seems to increase public anger.

"Museveni says he has democracy," Julius Otema, an electrician, remarked. "What kind of democracy is this?"

Many Ugandans and Western countries, which have lavished aid on Museveni's government, seem to be asking themselves the same question.

And, if Britain's decision last month to cut $26.5 million in aid to Uganda due to concerns over Besigye's arrest is any indication, some donor countries may have decided the answer.