Choose wisely

JUSTISIA SHIPENA
Ester Kamati

Choices are important, and better yet, good choices need to be made.

This column is deliberate because one of the biggest choices we will ever have to make will have to be made tomorrow. As it has been said for so long, tomorrow we finally “meet at the polls”. Now this is an open letter to the youth. This is the time where we prove to people that we are more than just Twitter fingers and designers of memes.

This is the time for us to take to the gram with photos and not to Facebook with statuses. To go live at the polls, do the most with the election hashtags and make efforts to induce the change we wish to see. I think this year politics has been more exciting for us than ever, because this year the status quo was actually challenged, and we opened our eyes to the possibility of a different environment; the possibility of a different system and the possibility of change.

We all know that change is inevitable, and although many of you believe that politics is stagnant, I think now is the perfect time to put that theory to the test. Let us test the system, because it is not fair to already decide an outcome, before even stepping into a polling station.

Let the efforts of those who shared information, took time to talk to us, motivate and make their agendas known, not be in vein. Initially we were sceptical, because we didn’t have enough information, but now that we are informed, what are we going to do? Are we going to prove everyone right that we are an ignorant youth, who do not care to take any stance, but rather make a joke of everything?

I am for some reason excited about the elections and I think I have sufficient reason to be. Let us keep building the hype around polls, and if need be, let us drag our friends out of bed to exercise the rights we so mightily preach about.

I am a Namibian citizen, I have rights and one of them is being able to vote, so let us not let each other down.

It is nobody’s place to tell you who to vote for and it is absolutely fine not to know who to vote for up until this point. More so, it is perfectly okay to walk in and vote out; as long as you have made your contribution that is absolutely fine! Just keep in mind everything you have been complaining about when you vote, think of whether a likely change would arise from where your finger decides to park on that electronic voting machine (EVM), because that is your last say as we conclude election season.

With that said, The Zone has done a lot when it comes to elections, and this time around, I will not preach much on it. I believe in us (us being the youth) and I trust that we will make the right decision. Even if it doesn’t go the way we would have hoped, you can rest assured that your contribution was still noted, and that is how we know that the country practices democracy, by the number of people who have voted.

Hats off to the media for covering the elections from all angles, and providing voters with the necessary information. Now the ball is officially in your court, ladies and gentlemen. So catch me at the polling station… how about that?