Ms Daisy Kankiriho Arinda, a second year Civil Engineer student has been declared winner of Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST)’s guild presidential election.
Ms Arinda’s vcrory was announced Friday making her the third female guild president at western Uganda’s giant public university. She believes serving as a vice president in the last guild term gained her popularity and confidence to win the race.
“I am not only the third female guild president but also the first guild president from Kihumuro campus mainly for engineers and computing guys. I feel happy to have represented Kihumuro campus. I think I won the election because I have been serving as a vice president. I did my work and it was very evident and people believed in me. I believe I didn’t win the election alone, we won as family,” Ms Arinda who contested as an independent candidate said Saturday.
According to her, MUST students should expect her guild cabinet to be more accountable to them as she will seek to improve budgeting and planning with the available funds.
“I will definitely come up with a system that will capture events of budgeting and planning for effective utilization of the available resources,” she said.
According to the university’s electoral chairperson, Mr Jonathan, the process was peaceful with a voter turn up of 3,505 electorate.
“A lot of history has been written in the 2024 MUST guild presidential election. We registered the highest voter turn up of 3,505 students. Basically, we witnessed the most peaceful election ever,” Mr Anyine said.
Mr Anyine added that unlike other public universities where political parties were banned, MUST students are free to express their affiliation political affiliation.
“We had the most harmonious voting day and did not receive any petition from any candidate. Unlike other universities, at MUST students are free to express their affiliation to Political parties and the winning candidate, Daisy Arinda Kankiriho, aspired as an independent candidate against other candidates,” he said.
She beat Joseph Kisitu of and Wilson Mughazu of He added.
Ms Arinda scooped 1,499 votes beating National Unity Platform (NUP)’s Wilson Mugazhu who got 1,199 votes and Uganda Young Democrats (UYD)’s Joseph Kasitu who garnered 755 votes.
