Moi university politics.

Every year there comes a period when the university holds elections for the student body council officials. Every school does participate with various candidates who compete. The period before is marred with campaign efforts by the various candidates. It is an important exercise to get involved in, choosing your leaders, exercising your rights, shaping the future. However, personally I distance myself from all of it. For the time I have been at Moi university I have never voted. I have a few reasons.

I see these people for the first time during the campaign period. I have no idea who they are and what they have done so far. All they tell you is what they are going to do. By the time they are done stating their intentions I have forgotten their name already. Moreover, after the elections I do not see them ever again regardless of whether they won the post or not. They cannot expect me to go queue and vote and it’s a guarantee that I will never see them or their promises again. It would be a waste of time. If I had seen these individual actively participating in activities that benefit the people they want to serve, then I would queue for them but they don’t.

Secondly, they are full of empty and even false promises. Every campaign period they come to us with the same promises. “You will get your results in time”, “The fee shall be reduced”, “The HELB loan will be increased”. They are very good comedians if you ask me. Every year they say this and every year it doesn’t happen. If anything, the exact opposite happens which I think motivates other to come the next year with the same empty promises. In fact, in some of these issues they would have no control over. I mean how would they get me money from the HELB loan?

Thirdly, it is my personal opinion that none of these candidates are motivates by service to their fellow students. I am of the opinion that most are motivated by selfish reasons. Reasons like the financial benefits that come with the post, the lux that comes with the post or filling their CVs. Passionate candidates would not just appear before and disappear after the elections. They would be around working even with no status. They would be there keeping in check the elected if they had lost.

Finally, fourth is that national politics have smeared a bad image to all politics at all levels. National politicians have been known to promote tribalism, incompetence and corruption. This leads to violence and oppression of people. So how different are these school politics different from national politics. I don’t know. But what I know is they appear election time and disappear later and they are full of empty promises.

It is a shame that these politics are in this nature. It will take better education and commitment to change minds of people to reject these types of politicians and go for the better qualified and ethically motivated politicians. Until the civil disobedience is in order!