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Citizen Posts
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Our politics is not ideologically oriented, it is based on class and opportunity. The politics is individual-centered. Individuals at the helm and Party colors determined the identity and the direction of the Party. The level of civic knowledge and awareness is very low and political leaders have exploited this weakness.
Even at one time President cautioned me at State House not to raise awareness among his rural voters, this happened when I was the Chairman of FDC Sironko during the peak of the ‘walk to work’ protest, which was an action of defiance or civil disobedience aimed at the high cost of fuel and living at that time. He even sent soldiers who surrounded my home in Nampanga for 3 days to prevent me from leaving.
This explains why political leaders have deliberately spent less effort in demanding civic education to raise political awareness among the population. If our people had enough awareness, levels of manipulation would have been less.
They would have voted wisely and avoided handouts in the form of gifts. This would have reduced levels of corruption like vote buying, etc. Vote buying undermines the trust in the electoral process.
In Uganda, we have two classes of people. We have the privileged and the underprivileged. Those who are eating are the minority and those who have nothing, the starving who form the majority. Therefore, the repressed or the oppressed will one day rise against the oppressors to take up their space.
Manipulation of voter ignorance through misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda will undermine the electoral process, and will only increase polarization, and divisions among the population.
Conclusively, there has to be an effort by the new incoming leaders to address the disparities in the distribution of national resources with an objective of equity for all and to ensure to demand for civic education of the population.
Mugoya Paul Polly, concerned citizen.
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