It is said that the toughest exam in the world is the Master Sommelier Diploma Exam. This is a wine-tasting test for expert winemakers.
The exam is divided into three sections — theory, service, and blind tasting.
The minimum passing score for each of the three sections is 75 per cent.
Students have three years to pass all three sections. If all the three parts are not passed during this period, they must start all over again and the entire exam must be retaken.
During these three years, the students are required to exhibit a high standard of technical and social skills, which includes the courtesy and charm of a Master Sommelier.
In the theory stage, the candidates must speak with authority on the wine areas of the world and their products, know the grape varieties used in winemaking and the areas of the world where they are cultivated, answer questions on international wine laws, and describe the production process, including vinification, fortification, handling and storage.
The service exam includes recommending wines to accompany a wide range of foods, describing their vintages and characteristics, and knowledge of the appropriate serving portions for each.
In the blind tasting stage, the students are required to clearly and articulately describe six different wines, the grape varietal making up the wine, country of origin where each grape is grown, district and appellation of origin, and the vintages of the wines tasted.
Most candidates fail at this stage. Only 229 people have been able to crack this exam since its inception 40 years ago. The pass rate is only eight per cent.
Now imagine a billionaire walks up to you and assures you he will give you Sh100 million, net of taxes, if you pass the Master Sommelier Diploma Exam. I can bet my last dollar that you would study night and day for that prize.
My fellow Kenyans, this is precisely the very reason why our intelligent politicians routinely, confidently, and deliberately say absurd things, and why we as smart Kenyans vote for even more stupid political promises. Because they know we the voters will not challenge, fact check, nor demand for evidence on what they are saying.
When we hear our politicians saying outrageous or blatantly false things, especially during campaigns, we decry the quality of the politicians that we have. And we keep wondering why no one better is willing to step up to the plate.
It is not that they are not intelligent enough to make more rational pronouncements. The reality is that they are intelligent enough to know the smart thing to do is to say absurd things to would-be voters.
But why is this, you may ask?
It is because they know we are ignorant voters. Not stupid, simply rationally ignorant. We know very little about politics, and even less about public policy.
In fact, we take pride and consider ourselves nobler, when we pontificate that we do not care about politics and politicians.
Hence, we do a very poor job of interrogating the information that is fed to us by politicians that influences who we vote for.
As voters, we choose not to consume too much information; neither do we discipline ourselves into thinking rationally about the information that politicians feed us.
We do not apply to the civic space what we consider an irreducible minimum in our private space.
For instance, prior to purchasing a car, we consider and compare different car models based on several factors such as cost, durability, features, performance, and availability of spare parts.
We even go the extra length of reading up about the different models, or enquiring from our friends on their opinion. We invest time and effort to get the best deal for our available means.
And while buying a car may be considered a preserve for those with means, similar factors are taken into consideration by your grandmother when she’s making a decision on which type of hoe to purchase.
But when we enter the civic space, our rationality evaporates. We revert to our default mode where we seek consensus rather than truth and rigour. We amplify emotions and euphoria over reason and logic.
We are lured by how the aspiring candidates make us feel. We are shackled by social pressure and cower before uniform opinion. We are swayed by the desire to belong and to conform.
And our politicians know this all too well. This is why they will repeat absurd soundbites that ignite our feelings rather than our intellect with the intention of making an emotional connection with the voters.
Unlike rational communication that requires analysis, synthesis, and fact-checking, emotional communication is effortless and demands little or no attention.
Most voters find it daunting to rationalise public policy, because doing so successfully requires time and effort.
What we do not realise is that good governance requires people to be involved, not merely good leadership.
For instance, how many of us have ever tasked our aspiring politicians to give us a breakdown of how they expect to fund all the nirvana goodies they promise us during campaigns?
Or how many of us reflect on the impact the actualization of those promises will have on our lives before deciding who to cast our vote for?
Every politician’s goal is to win elections. And to do so, they need to appeal to as many voters as possible.
This is why every smart politician behaves in ways that he hopes will appeal to the typical voter. Top on this list is saying absurd things. And the more inappropriate the assertions, the more electrified the voters become.
I submit that if we were better-informed, dispassionate policy-wonks, then political campaign rhetoric would have some semblance of logic and rationale. Unfortunately, most of us are poorly informed, passionate about individuals not issues, abstain from engaging with public policy, and of course, tribal.
What we fail to realise is that voting is the predominant way that we the electorate influence the quality of our government, and ultimately our lives. But nobody chooses by themselves. Collectively, we decide electoral outcomes together.
How we vote has consequences; but how you as an individual vote, does not.
Because your one vote in a million will not make any difference.
Hence if more of us invested more time and effort to interrogate political promises and public policy, the quality of our electoral outcomes, policies, government integrity, and ultimately our livelihoods would improve correspondingly. In street lingo, they would say, hatutabebwa malenge.
Finally, my unsolicited advice is to those who distance themselves from politics. Both bad driving and bad voting are dangerous, not merely to the individual who practices them, but to innocent bystanders.
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
