A Lion, Fox and Ass are all hunting together. They all gathered a huge amount of food and now had to decide how to divide it. The Lion asked the Ass to divide the food. So the Ass chose to divide the potions equally.
This made the Lion, the king of beasts angry and with his paw he killed the Ass. The Lion then asked the Fox to divide the food. The Fox wasted no time. He quickly gave a huge heap to the Lion and only kept a small portion to himself.
The Lion asked the Fox, who taught you to divide so fairly? The Fox replies, I learnt from the Ass.
In the recent past, leaders have come out requesting voters to vote six-piece in the upcoming election. Deputy President William Ruto and ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi have been asking their party supporters to ensure this happens.
In the 2017 election, there was a perception that some leaders manipulated the Jubilee nominations and planted their own leaders in various seats who went on to win in Mt Kenya.
Back then, voters were told to vote six-piece. At the time, Jubilee was united behind President Uhuru Kenyatta. But things are different this time as there is no single political party that can claim to have a hold on the region.
In 2013, we saw voters in parts of the Mt Kenya region reject the six-piece voting pattern. In places such as Nyeri and Kirinyaga, TNA could not manage to get all seats despite being the most dominant party, with GNU and Narc Kenya getting various positions.
Most of the leaders elected in Mt Kenya since 2013 have been underwhelming, a disaster and have not performed well, compared to leaders from other regions. The poor performance can be linked to the manipulated nominations that locked out more deserving leaders.
In the upcoming election, Mt Kenya voters have decided to take matters into their own hands and change the current crop of leaders. We are thus likely to see the most aggressive political tsunami in the region where voters will send home most of the current leaders.
The six-piece voting pattern has been rejected, and calls to use this approach will fail miserably. We have seen it happen in by-elections in the region where parties that have been perceived to be strongest have lost to smaller ones.
Like the Fox in the story above, Mt Kenya voters have learnt from the mistakes of six-piece voting.
Voters in Mt Kenya will elect candidates, not parties. Already one can see that most of the strongest candidates have refused to align with some of the parties seeking to make inroads in the region.
A generational change and paradigm shift in leadership is coming to Mt Kenya. Most young people, who make the largest voting bloc, have expressed great disappointment in the current crop of leaders.
This is because the current crop of leaders seems to have no specific ideals that they stand on. They are not focused on their people and their needs, unlike leaders who existed in the region before the 2013 election.
This begs the question; where are leaders of the calibre of Michuki, Karume and Matiba, who once dominated the Mt Kenya landscape? Why is the region struggling to put forward a single leader who can be at the top with the rest of the dominating presidential aspirants?
Presidential aspirants who are seeking the Mt Kenya votes must therefore not seek to push the region into a box. The region is not ready to be dictated to on who they should vote for because they belong to a specific party.
Mt Kenya voters know the leaders who have been working, those who have not been working and those who have the potential to perform. Political parties are therefore not the focus of the voters and that’s how the six-piece pattern will fall through the cracks.
