I refuse to vote, not in these elections and not for these candidates. I feel like it comes down to slogans every year. Someone comes up and says they espouse Christianity above all else. Another rises against them, talks of a radical change. Then we march to November inundated with canvassers and posters and hit-pieces and puff pieces, all for candidates who honestly do not know much about anything.
I refuse to vote because the system is so broken. The people we are told to vote for can do nothing but make promises. A regime is not defined by what it does during its term but rather by what the candidates say during the campaigns. We come out to hear them speak and we bow as they do. We are entranced by their words. Yet when they go in and say, “We should look out for the less-privileged, especially sitting on our gold thrones in our Ivory Tower,” they get shot down. The wings that carried them so high are clipped by people who promised them the power to drive change. The system does not want to change.
I refuse to vote. There are important elections around the world, even on our campus. This is not one of them. When Makerere votes for guild leaders, the people they bring into power can determine the effectiveness of a strike, they can determine whether students on government scholarships go another month without their stipends. In our case, people organise a run to self-congratulate and self-promote and even then still eat from the fruits of their own poisonous tree.
There are and were crucial elections this year. People in those countries voted and others will vote, because no matter what concerns they have about the system, inaction poses an existential threat to them.
For us, well, we will just get to wait another year to do it all again. So I refuse to vote.
Kemuel Othieno
