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 replied, I learnt from the Ass.
As we enter the last weeks of the campaigns, most political outfits have decided to campaign for their own dominant political party. Some are nearly forcing members to vote for their own parties despite being in a major coalition while others focus on campaigning for the coalition.
We are falling into the same danger that Kenya has been in the past, of being forced to vote for certain political parties or individuals. And then we end up complaining for the rest of the terms of the elected leaders.
For those who can recall, before the return of multi-party democracy, and even when Kanu was the only party, people were still forced to vote for specific leaders through the mlolongo system.
When we returned to multi-party democracy, we ended up creating small democracies within the regions where a specific party was popular. Since then, we have ended up asking people to vote six-piece in elections.
Today, where ODM is most popular, you have politicians asking voters to vote for the party’s candidates from the President to MCA. This same call is made in other areas such as where let us say UDA, Wiper or ANC is popular.
All of the ills facing our democracy can be traced down to one problem—six-piece voting. To insinuate that one political party has all of the best candidates going into an election is an insult to our democracy.
This would mean that they had a perfect nomination process and there was absolutely no favouritism or rigging, which we know is impossible. We know that there are people running as independents and those who moved to other parties after nominations.
We clearly know that there are people who own those political parties that are perceived to be popular and are in the business of selling tickets to the highest bidder. Therefore, you will find that an unpopular politician with a lot of money will buy a ticket and then ride on that wave.
In this election, let's vote for the best leaders who are focused on transforming local communities. Evaluate every name on the ballot paper and vote based on their individual merits and not the political party that they belong to.
Let's not be swayed into mass groupthink perpetuated by leaders who are keen on promoting unscrupulous individuals so that they can get the numbers they need in parliament or the county assemblies. We must be objective in the election of leaders, and not be merely voting machines.
There is a large pool of leaders on the various ballots who have what it takes to lead us well but could be in what is perceived to be unpopular parties, or vying as independent candidates. If we do not give leaders an equal chance in leadership by properly evaluating their policies and work, we will end up complaining all the time.
In 2013, we saw how voters in parts of the Mt Kenya region rejected the six-piece voting pattern. In places like 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.
We should emulate this kind of voting where we should not be pulled to voting for the most dominant party in our regions. We must look at the leaders we have on the ballot objectively and judge them by their past performance and what they are promising to do.
“WATCH: The latest videos from the Star”
