Low turn out as UCU elects new guild

Uganda Christian University on Wednesday held its long-awaited guild elections for the year 2020-21.

However, a big percentage of the students declined to participate in the unconventional elections which involved students voting using their phones and computers. This kind of voting was code-named E-Chagua.

Out of 8086 total voters, only 1959 students participated. The number of voters, therefore, did not even make half of the percentage of the total voters.

However, the director of student affairs, Bridget Mugume Mugasira said that the low turn-up cannot affect the results of the election.

For the top guild office, the university's main campus in Mukono had two aspirants; Kenneth Agaba Amponda, a third-year law student, and Jim Patrick Wasswa, a third-year engineering student.

For UCU Kampala Campus, the guild president, Pheobe Desire Namujuhe came in unopposed.

Mugasira said that in the guild elections guidelines, it's not stipulated that for one to win they must first acquire a certain percentage of votes, hence making this a valid vote which must count despite the low voter turn up.

"Given the fact that this is our first time to use this kind of election, we call it a success. We have had some challenges here and there but we have managed to overcome them," she said.

 "Many of our students despite the fact that we are in a digital era, they have not yet embraced digital, but they will get on board as we go on," she added.

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 that because of the early morning rain, most of the agents for different candidates failed to keep time yet 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 end which was initially 5:00 pm but was changed to 7:00 pm and later to 8:00 pm.

The unofficial shifting of time at which the election was to end left some of the students that had gathered to watch the process protesting as they accused Mugasira and the electoral commission officials of having ill motives.

This called for Police's involvement to calm down the students so as to allow the process to end peacefully.

Students also said that a number of them failed to vote because logging into the system was a challenge whereas others did not have passwords.

The UCU main campus electoral commission chairperson Joshua Arinda said that the E-Chagua election did not receive the best welcome from students because not all of them appreciate innovations like this at first.

Arinda said if the university continues to use this kind of election in the years to come, students will get used to and embrace it as time goes.

Jemimah Elizabeth, the electoral commission chairperson Kampala Campus said this was a very good turn up and an achievement on their part as the electoral commission.

Arinda and Mugasira declared Desire Pheobe Namujehe as the guild president for UCU Kampala Campus and Kenneth Agaba Amponda as the guild president UCU main campus.

Amponda scored 1229 votes against his contender Wasswa who garnered 449 votes.