In the looming election, many voters are giving up their vitality and enlighten for non permanent beneficial properties
COMMENT | WALTER AKENA | As Uganda prepares for the 2026 general elections, a acquainted sample is initiating to emerge. Campaign rallies are rising louder, candidates are crisscrossing constituencies, and political posters are being plastered on every accessible surface. But, amid this frenzy, a sobering biblical yarn from Genesis 25:19-34 involves suggestions—that of Esau and Jacob.
In the yarn, Esau, the elder of the two sons of Isaac, came home one day from trying, exhausted and hungry. His younger brother Jacob had ready a pot of stew. Esau, driven by hunger, asked for some. Jacob seized the chance and asked Esau to commerce his birthright for the meal. Esau agreed. In a second of desperation, he exchanged a lifetime of inheritance and blessing for a fleeting second of satisfaction. He later regretted it, on the opposite hand it used to be too unhurried.
This yarn mirrors what most steadily happens in Uganda all through elections. Many voters, admire Esau, are giving up their vitality and enlighten for non permanent beneficial properties—money, food, or alcohol. In doing so, they commerce away the very foundation of their future.
In a democratic society, voters are presupposed to be responsible. They’re the ones who give leaders the authority to manipulate on their behalf. Leaders, in return, are anticipated to serve the folks who elected them, whereas final to blame to them. Alternatively, this relationship is ceaselessly grew to turn out to be upside down when votes are bought and offered. The voter, who could per chance mute be the grasp, turns steady into a beggar, whereas the elected chief assumes the role of a boss.
Refer to any marketing campaign rally this day, and you need to per chance eye what number of voters don’t appear to be any longer in a candidate’s vision, competence, or policy suggestions. As an change, the commonest inquire of you’ll hear is, “How are you leaving us?”—a coded formulation of soliciting for money or handouts. Problems admire health care, roads, training, and comely water are every so often ever discussed.
When a voter accepts money or a bribe from a candidate, they lose the staunch authority to inquire of larger products and services. A vote, in its appropriate sense, is a social contract. It empowers leaders to symbolize electorate, develop legal pointers, draw budgets, and tune service supply. In return, electorate occupy the magnificent to inquire of, critique, and achieve these leaders to blame. But when votes are traded for money, the contract is broken earlier than it even begins.
Professor PLO Lumumba, a prominent Kenyan steady scholar, as soon as remarked that “the tragedy in Africa is that we are given a blank cheque and we exit to aquire a Tuk-Tuk and quiz it to attain admire a Mercedes-Benz.” He further stated that “we decide hyenas to address our goats and are worried when the goats are eaten.”
These analogies talk straight to our most modern arena. Elections give us the chance to make a decision essentially the most succesful folks to manage our public affairs. But over and over, we wreck that likelihood on candidates who lack the vision, competence, and character to book.
The saddest segment is that what voters bring collectively in alternate is ceaselessly painfully runt. A candidate could per chance distribute fifty thousand shillings to be shared amongst hundreds of folks. A single voter could per chance discontinue up with simplest 200 shillings—lower than the fee of a packet of salt. Others could per chance bring collectively low-fee alcohol that does more damage than factual. After the election, the identical voters suffer the penalties of their alternate recommendations—nefarious roads, feeble health centers, colleges with out desks, and dry water sources.
Worse mute, when money turns into the determining part in who gets elected, your entire political system is corrupted. Candidates who exhaust natty portions to win elections most steadily feel entitled to enhance their money, on the entire through embezzlement or misappropriation of public sources. Provider supply is neglected, and public belief in govt continues to erode.
This style could per chance mute be reversed, and urgently. First, Ugandan voters want to tag the vitality of their vote. It is not a commodity to be offered nonetheless a enlighten with which to inquire of for products and services. Voters must start evaluating candidates essentially based on their character, tune story, and suggestions, not on what they supply out all through campaigns.
2d, Parliament must plug and put into effect a sturdy legislation on marketing campaign financing. Vote procuring and all forms of electoral bribery could per chance mute be clearly outlawed and punished. The Electoral Commission and anti-corruption agencies could per chance mute be empowered to tune marketing campaign spending and review conditions of voter inducement.
Third, civic training could per chance mute be intensified, especially in rural areas where vote procuring is rampant. Voters want to tag that elections are regarding the long term—about who will develop policies that occupy an influence on kids’s training, access to health care, job creation, and nationwide style.
As we put collectively to vote again, let us not repeat the errors of the previous. Like Esau, we could per chance feel momentarily hungry or determined, nonetheless we must not let that desperation blind us to the long-length of time penalties of marketing our rights. Enable us to make a decision leaders who’re succesful, appropriate, and in a arena to serve. Enable us to solid our votes essentially based on substance, not money.
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The writer is a Look at Officer on the Advocates Coalition for Development and Atmosphere (ACODE)
