When I was still a young kid in my primary school days I used to spend most of the evenings with my grandmother and it wasn’t only me but all our family could come sit together and recite poems, listen to those old good stories from mum and grand mum and that used to be the time we could all make peace if during day we had quarreled over something and maybe hurt each other.
But what I can never forget is what my grand mum used to tell us, she said to us some day that people by their very nature tend to trust others, and at the same time tend to expect others to trust them. She said that this tendency is not necessarily ideal in every case. She assured us that in quite a number of instances, people may try to mislead us while they expect others to mislead them as well.
It is very hard to manage having a friendship especially when you have a person that you trust but tells you something else and tells the other the opposite of what he/she told. If we were to know the kinds of people that we deal with, then we might have been taking precautions one way or the other.
Still I might have not communicated yet and my message has not been picked yet, right? Anyway, Uganda is at a very critical time when everyone is discussing politics allover social media, all whatsapp groups, Facebook and twitter, people have now made politics the topic of discussion from early morning till late night. We are getting close to election days but I have found out that indeed as you grow up and reflect on those old stories, you find out that the old people of ours are always right.
I never knew at some moment I would even see politicians who deep in their hearts want to be safe but don’t want others to be safe claiming that a struggle is a struggle so others have to die so the struggle remains. I don’t buy that idea of all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. I have seen several politicians talk about causing violence and they have already done so during the campaigns leading to deaths of some innocent souls who are not part of the ugly thinking.
A small number of us will vote for the same person on the polling day. We are so different and each of us has different views, which is basically why we all should be able to vote for the candidates that we want to vote into the various offices. Sometimes we agree on the outcome, but not the path to get there. I have never been excited about who wins what position because I always know who the winner is basing on the real support that each candidate has, not basing on the street ululation and social media praises, but I have never protested because this candidate has not won, have even never felt like abusing anyone or even reporting someone’s social media page because he/she is not supporting the candidate I support, that’s how far Uganda youthful politics lovers have gone.
With all the various protests lead by some of our opposition leaders here in Uganda, it is just common knowledge that some politicians call for meetings to order their supporters to resort to violence if they lose elections something that doesn’t show any piece of being democratic and abiding to the law..
There is absolutely no need for security to shoot bullets at anyone and this can only happen if we as citizens behave and don’t be violent and more specifically, it is beneficial to the general public if all the police brutality had come to an end.
Given this period’s harsh and unpardonable times, it is almost impossible to contain everyone’s emotions since everyone knows that they are right in their own way. It is just so good if everyone stopped the avoidable violence caused by some hooligans.
Very many people are so scared for what is about to come and the worst part is that everyone expects that what coming next is worse after elections something that I think isn’t right at all. We were sampled in November, it was an early call for security to organize itself and get ready for what they are always referring to as the worst struggle.
History should always teach us some lessons, Kenya has experienced both civil conflict and state repression around elections, widespread civil conflict has not taken place in recent Ugandan polls, and Ghanaian elections have been comparatively though not wholly peaceful. These three cases therefore exemplify the prominence of electoral peace campaigns in very different contexts. At the same time, they allow us to hold certain important variables constant such as the colonial power, type of electoral system, and the uninterrupted holding of multiparty elections over the last decade.
I remember in Kenya, around the 2013 election, there was a newly instituted National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) that worked with local administrators, organizations and networks to monitor hate speech; media houses and international organizations trained journalists on conflict reporting and called for peace; performing artists, comedians, and public advertizing called upon Kenyans to vote in peace; and all politicians tried so much to show how they were committed to being peace loving.
This was done by Kenya to avoid the deadly results that could occur if there was violence and in an election that followed in 2017, lots of people died because of violence. This violence was led by the losers of the elections and it was also tribal something that we don’t even need in the current Uganda though I see very many opposition politicians calling for such inhuman acts of hating on some tribes and people.
We have had visionary voices in every age pointing us in the ways of peace, and we have had good leaders, too. As we go for elections next week, we need millions of ordinary people who believe in peace, love peace, long for peace, and speak the language of peace, not those that preach hate and tell others to do what themselves cannot do, we all have families so we should always remember that our families should not be used to enable others have their bread and butter served.
We don’t have to be very clever or wealthy, we don’t have to know everything about the history of our country or be able to explain the differences between nationalism and patriotism. All of these are good, but the main issue is for us to remain human and to become humane. We can do this because many other people have done so around the world
To my fellow Uganda wherever you are and especially my fellow youth, It is up to you, and the next generation, the young men and women in the pearl of Africa, to work towards deepening and supporting the democratic processes. It is your country Uganda now, look at it as your whole world. I am very sure that you all know that deepening our democracy is a crucial struggle, not just for our future prosperity and peace, but also for our basic human objective to live as free men and women of this great nation Uganda.
At the end of it all, what matters is not so much which candidate or which party wins an election, as long as the country wins. We shall remain as brothers and sisters after the elections are done and we shall still go on with our usual work schedules un -interrupted so all we need from each other is hugging and requesting each of us to be peaceful and calm during this election period.
Michael Woira is a Patriotic Ugandan
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