UCU elects new guild govt through virtual elections

EDUCATION

The Uganda Christian University has conducted its virtual guild elections for both Main and Kampala Campuses. The elections code-named e-chagua involved students electing their guild leadership through the use of phones or computers.

According to the Director of Students Affairs (DOSA, Bridget Mugume Mugasira, out of 8086 total voters, only 1959 participated and 6127 did not bother. The number of voters, therefore, did not even make half of the percentage of the total voters.

For the top guild offices, the university's Mukono main campus had two candidates; Kenneth Agaba Amponda, a third-year law student, and Jim Patrick Wasswa, a third-year engineering student. Amponda was declared the winner after scoring 1229 votes against his contender Wasswa who garnered 449 votes.

At the Kampala Campus, Pheobe Desire Namujehe was declared guild president after going through unopposed. The DOSA, Mugasira said the big number of students who did not participate in the election will not affect the end results. She said, in the guild elections guidelines, it's not stipulated that for one to win they must first acquire a certain percentage of votes.

The system was reported to have had a number of challenges including failure to maintain the time whereby instead of kicking off at 9:00 am, they started at 10:00 am.

Mugasira said because of the early morning rain, most of the agents for different candidates failed to keep time. She said because it was a virtual election, they were supposed to be around before they started as a matter of transparency.

This, therefore, affected the time at which the election was to close which was initially 5:00 pm. The students attempted to contest what they called unfair decisions taken by the EC officials and the DOSA. However, this called for Police's involvement to calm down the students so that they could allow the election process to end peacefully.