Most
people would agree that if elections were held this year, or even next year,
our current president would join a club of presidents who failed to win a
second term in Africa – or anywhere else, for that matter. It’s a special club
no president wants to join, but those who have joined either did or did not do
what opened the door for their membership.
A
common denominator for those in this special club is mass disappointment among
the electorate, driven by Presidents’ incompetence and lack of leadership.
When
trying to make Democratic President Jimmy Carter Wantam in 1980, Republican
nominee Ronald Reagan posed the question to voters, “Are you better off than
you were four years ago?” Reagan posed this question when Carter was making
some gains in depicting Reagan as an extreme conservative whose only interest
was to cater to the rich and not the average voter.
Carter’s
argument was a good one, but the majority of voters answered the question in
the negative and voted for Reagan, giving him a landslide victory that
transformed American politics. He was only outdone by another Republican who
decades later is still busy transforming the country – for the worse, according
to many critics, while others hold the contrary view.
There
is little or no doubt if you ask Kenyans today whether they are they better off
than they were in 2022, the vast majority will answer in the negative, just as
the Americans did when Reagan asked this simple question. The simple answer
helped propel him to the presidency and into history.
The
question is whether Kenyans would give the same answer if the question were
asked on Election Day 2027? Of course, only God knows.
What
we the mortals know is that it would take a miracle for President William Ruto
to do two things simultaneously in less than two years: to divide the
opposition, which he is trying fiercely to do and to undo what he has done or
not done since he became head of state to cause the current resentment or
rejection.
At
best, what the President may likely do is succeed in the former, meaning divide
the opposition, but it’s doubtful he’ll ever reverse the latter – at least in
any way that can reverse the tide against him and his policies. They have done
nothing but keep Kenyans suffering even more than when he took office.
Should
the President succeed in dividing the opposition, or should the opposition
itself fail to remain united and front one candidate, then it is very likely
we’ll have a runoff for the first time in our country’s history.
To
be sure, we were supposed to and should have had a runoff in 2013 but, as I
have previously argued, that became unnecessary for reasons there is no need to
get into.
Every
indication is that we are headed to a runoff election in 2027. Put another way,
we will avoid a runoff only if the opposition remains united and fronts one
candidate to take on the current president.
Which
brings up another question: who wins in a runoff should there be one?
The
question presupposes – and it’s a correct presupposition that there will be at
least three serious candidates in the ballot. Analytically, it matters not
whether it’s three or 10 candidates on the ballot. The key is in a scenario
where there are at least three candidates, with two being strong and a third
being relatively weak but good for denying either of the strong candidates
wins. Constitutionally, victory requires 50 per cent plus one and 25 per cent
of the majority of the counties. In that scenario, we shall have a runoff.
You
already know who the top two vote getters will be. What makes the 2027 election
fascinating is that there is one candidate who is well positioned to win in the
runoff – if he doesn’t win outright in round one - whether or not the
third vote getter supports him. And that’s none other than former Interior CS
Fred Matiang’i.
