Nominated MP and former Murang’a county woman representative Sabina Chege is a rare example of someone who has been highly successful as a vernacular FM radio icon as well as in politics.
Such success is actually very rare. In general, a journalist or media personality who sets out to open a new chapter in their life by seeking elective office is on the road to disaster.
I must admit that in my days as an Opinions Editor I sometimes found a huge gap between the politician, if you spoke to him, and the high quality of his writing – leading to a suspicion that he had a professional writer do the actual writing for him. But all the same, there are many politicians who are surprisingly good writers. But not many writers or journalists can hope to be successful in politics.
There is a clear logic to this – at least as it applies to this country.
In Kenyan politics, you do not get very far if you insist on a rigid adherence to the truth. Kenyan voters in general are addicted to fragrant lies which appeal to their illusions. They have little time for anyone who offers a diet of painful truths.
On the other hand, success in the media requires that you be honest with your readers and tell them the truth, even if they do not want to read or hear it.
That is why the Kenyan media landscape is littered with the dry carcasses of publications that were set up to pursue a certain fixed agenda, usually a pro-government agenda.
You may get away with it for a time, presenting a false image of what is going on in the country. But eventually, it will be clear to one and all that your objective is not to shine a light on events as they occur, but rather to forward a favourable impression that is often contradicted with what the members of the public can see with their own eyes.
There was once a daily newspaper called the Kenya Times that is a perfect example of an attempt by the state to convince the public that black is white, and white is black.
Those activists who agitated for an end to the authoritarian single-party state and a return to 'pluralism' (ie, multiparty elections) – for example – were invariably labelled as “puppets carrying out the instructions of their foreign masters”.
In the end, many of those activists went on to have successful political careers in the multiparty era that began in 1991. But the Kenya Times, which once seemed so powerful, given the backing it enjoyed from the state, went into decline and was in the end consigned to what Kenyans gleefully term “the dustbin of history”.
But turning to politicians, I do not think that an election can be won by a candidate saying plainly, for example, that “The current MP is a good enough man, and he is doing his best within the limits of what is possible given the endless demands of a basically very poor electorate. But it has been my dream since childhood to be seen holding forth in some important debate in the parliamentary chamber; and to be greeted as 'Mheshimiwa' by one and all. So, I am going to run against him”.
From what I have seen, in politics you must – to a very large degree – entertain the voters when you summon them to listen to you. And there is nothing they find more entertaining than to have a speaker tearing down the serving MP or MCA, even if this is someone they actually voted for personally.
So we find that, far from pointing out the limitations of what is possible given the need to disburse the NG-CDF funds to the many who need the support of such funds, a journalist who has spent many years diligently seeking out the truth, faithfully fact-checking reports, trying to see the issues from both sides, etc, would have to abandon such balance and fairness completely.
When on the campaign trail, he would ideally start his standard stump speech with something like, “I refuse to sit back and watch my people being robbed any longer. This thief must go.”
