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By Cinderella Atenyo-Moroto
What started from the polling stations in Moroto on Thursday 22- January -2026 as low voter turnout ended up at the Tally center as electoral officials could not start tallying without the presence of the key stakeholders to witness the counting. Returning Officer Ajwang Esther blamed the delays on the key stakeholders that were missing to kick-start the tallying process which was meant to begin by 7pm, but later began at 9Pm.
On Tuesday Morning in Moroto District, low voter turnout characterized the Local Government and special interest group-SIG elections with candidates, voters, agents, and presiding officers describing it to poor mobilization, lost morale and lack of civic education. At RTC A-LOM polling station in Boma grounds, no voter had turned up by at 10:00am.
Presiding officer Ilukol Mary Magdalene expressed that poor mobilization led to the low turnout of voters, while at Bazaar L-Z polling station, out of 400 registered voters, only 95 had turned up by the same time. Mr. David Koryang, the incumbent and an independent candidate in the LC5 race, who lost to Anjelo Pulkol, the NRM flag bearer, attributed the trend to lost morale and a mentality among most voters that elections of Presidential and parliamentary candidates is much important than the local government once.
“After Presidential and parliamentary elections there’s has always been low turnout for the local government and this is going to even be worse at the Sub-County levels”, He Lamented.
Koryang who earlier expressed his chances of winning the race pointed out peace as one of the areas of focus to fight if re-elected, stating that Peace is an asset and he will make sure he pushes it for the generations to come.
Meanwhile, Moroto NRM LC5 Flag bearer Anjello Pulkol, who won the race, related the low voter turnout to lack of civic education and low morale among voters as others got disappointed during the previous elections of presidential and parliamentary candidates.
Pulkol said he used his agents to talk to voters to turn and vote because the positions at local government are what matters most to bridge the governance. He urged that if the electoral commission could start the elections with the lower government positions, this vise would be dealt with accordingly.
In Moroto, the exercise kicked off on a slow note at most polling stations at the official opening time of 7:00am. According to the Electoral Commission, voting officially starts at 7:00am and closes at 4:00PM. While polling materials were delivered on time and the election officials were set to start across the Country, voting largely began late because of low turn up of voters.
