Do not succumb to vote buying and selling

The political temperatures are rising as we come close to the polls in February next year and it is no doubt that the poll candidates are already traversing the country in the name of consulting their voters. Whereas the political candidates are getting closer to their voters, extending frequent visits to constituencies, attending more public functions and struggling for any available platforms of expression of interests, the voters are happily waiting for the moment to hold them ransom all in the name of votes.

Many voters pride in the poll days as it seems it is their most fetching business enterprise as well as time to express high level vengeance against those they believe have not delivered at all to their respective constituencies. It is also not new that votes have been and are being bought through various means ranging from dishing out money baskets to granting unwarranted favours among others.

It is now fashionable that a vote is now a commodity of trade as it is easily bought by the politicians and sold by the voters even for five hundred shillings. Voters have been reduced to commodities and the politicians will do whatever is in their means to buy the votes and the voters too will parade their votes to the highest bidder.

Vote buying and selling is not only a form of corruption but also defeats the purpose of electoral democracy where "leaders" buy themselves into power and where voters trade their power (vote) to the highest bidder regardless of their integrity, capability and ability to advance their voices.

I therefore call upon fellow citizens as we head towards exercising our right to choice to be persuaded by ones' moral integrity, capability and ability to lead them rather than how much money they are willing to offer for a vote because the best tool to good governance we have as citizens is the vote and as such should be guarded jealously and exercised rightly!

Michael Aboneka Jr

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