Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once referred to democracy as the worst form of governance, “except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
People being accorded a fair and unhindered opportunity to choose both their governing legislation and their representatives in leadership offices is the hallmark of democracy.
A seamless citizen audit of governance is the other important facet of democracy. Since the advent of political pluralism in the ’90s, Kenya has acquired the reputation of being in a permanent state of political euphoria. Campaigns for the next election cycle (or the next plebiscite as is now the norm) start the day after the declaration of electoral results.
Lately, we have been presented with a theory that the seeming chemistry breakdown between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto is a product of the latter’s disregard of the former’s caution against early political campaigns.
These campaigns, we were told, would take the nation’s eye off the transformative Big Four agenda meant to fast-track the realisation of the country’s Vision 2030. On the face of it, that is a sensible, well-meaning and necessary caution. The irony, however, is that the BBI is a government political project that seems to have taken primacy over the Big Four agenda.
The second phase of the tragedy is the fact that campaigns for this partisan political project fly right in the face of the President’s caution against intoxicating the national climate with politics so early into his term.
Going by the vibe from its rallies, the BBI project is designed to programme the Kenyan voter against a certain political quarter in the context of the presidential contest matrix.
Via E-Mail
