We have now entered an exceptionally fluid phase in the current election cycle where it is difficult to keep track of all the changes taking place literally every day.
It is no longer possible to speak with any certainty of which regions are likely to support which presidential candidate – nor yet whether we will see the usual rigid bloc voting by region that has characterised previous elections.
A new and interesting angle to all this is the threat heard most often these days, issued by those who claim to speak for their regional vote blocs. This relates to the proposed running mates for the leading presidential candidates.
And we see such unofficial spokesmen for regional interests declare that if 'their son' is not selected as the number two of their coalition’s presidential candidate, then the region will 'en masse' move to vote for the rival team.
In short, we are now at the consensus-building stage of the campaigns. And such consensus building is proving much harder than usual.
For these purported leaders of such regional interests willingly and freely joined one political coalition or another. But once inside, they now threaten to mobilise their supporters to cast their votes for their current bitter rival if their demands are not met.
I am reminded of the changes in public opinion that evolved during the Covid-19 pandemic, which now seems to be in its last legs. Or at least so we hope. This too revealed the same obstructionist impulse in human nature.
In the early days when barely anything was known about this new virus, conspiracy theories about the 'real' source of this new and deadly infection were rampant. And only authoritarian measures managed to get Kenyans to follow the simple instructions given on how to keep Covid-19 at bay, by observing the curfews, social distancing protocols and wearing face masks, etc.
Then within a year, announcements were made of new and effective vaccines against this deadly disease. And then the narrative changed to one of a supposed 'vaccine apartheid'. This was a theory that the new life-saving medications were bound to be distributed along strictly racial lines, with Africans being the last people to get the opportunities for vaccination – if ever.
The idea of a looming 'vaccine apartheid' was so widespread that even top officials of the Kenyan Ministry of Health made reference to it, as an existential challenge they were determined to overcome.
But as global production was ramped up, and vaccines became more readily available, Kenya was in fact one of the first African nations to receive a steady supply of the various proven vaccines. This was not so much that Kenya had the money to pay for these new vaccines but rather that the US, the EU, and Japan very generously paid for this supply of vaccines through the Covax mechanism. Notably, this was at a time when not all of these countries’ own citizens had been vaccinated.
This should have put an end to all controversy over the Covid-19 pandemic. But it did not. A minority hardcore of resistors now came up with a new idea for opposing the vaccination campaign.
As I recall it, the suggestion was that there was something suspicious about the ease with which these vaccines had been made available to African nations. And from this arose a conviction that all that frustration and chaos of the Covid-19 pandemic had really been just a giant hoax to get us all to queue up – like lambs to the slaughter – and get vaccinated.
Only it was not really a vaccine that was being injected into us, but rather a kind of high-tech 'microchip implant' that would subsequently be used to control us all. And that in the circumstances, the wise would avoid anything to do with government vaccination campaigns.
So here is a case where, on a matter like Covid 19 – a life-and-death issue on which all the leading doctors and biomedical research scientists speak with one voice – people keep coming up with their own obstructionist ideas in opposition to the medical consensus.
So how much more difficult would it be, to create a consensus in something like politics in which just about everybody believes they are experts?
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