It is less than a year to the 2022 General Election. The country will again be going to the polls to elect a new set of leaders to steer the country through the next five years.
They will be charged with the responsibility of guiding the growth of the country and legislating on important matters of national interest. The leaders will also be handed the constitutional mandate to govern Kenya’s resources and ensure equitable distribution.
The six positions up for elections are president, governor, senator, woman representative, Member of Parliament and MCA. Being the third election since the implementation of the 2010 Constitution, it means it will usher in new leaders, with the old ones having served their constitutional two terms.
Besides President Uhuru Kenyatta, there are also a number of governors who will pave way to allow new occupants of the county top office.
This means the stakes are high and everyone is jostling to get into an elective position.
The prevailing situation has now seen political interests taking centre stage and temperatures rising. With the BBI debacle officially out of the way following the court ruling, new issues are now emerging for consideration.
The leaders are busy developing narratives to convince voters to support them. From the local levels, where MPs and MCAs are, to the higher levels where governors and the president are, theories are being thrown out in an attempt to sway voters one way or the other.
Unfortunately, we are seeing a repeat of the same rhetoric that has caused the country dearly in yester elections. Kenya and its politicians are not learning from history and there is a recurrence of the same issues of the past that led to chaos. Wananchi are being divided along political, ethnic, religious and tribal lines with drums of war being beaten to mobilise support for particular groups or interests. These divides are now being sold as the vehicles to marshal support and engage the electorate during the 2022 campaigns.
In the recent past, Kenyans have seen politicians, including the President and his deputy, going at each other publicly and openly attacking the other’s policies.
Citizens have also watched and listened with amazement at how the two have decided to publicly challenge and point accusing fingers at each other. Never before in the country has the Presidency, which is a combination of the President and the Deputy President, become more divisive than is the case. The two don’t see eye to eye and this has caused Kenyans to question the leadership of the country.
With the background of the feuding Presidency, there are now politicians who are openly confronting each other and making proclamations that are tantamount to incitement.
They have sowed seeds of discord and encouraged their followers to hate each other while hiding behind politics and elections.
In the process, they have divided the populace and raised tensions in the country. In different parts of the country, there are reported cases of politicians mobilising their ethnic communities and encouraging tribalism.
In parts like the Coast and Nyanza, there are cases of youth gangs mobilising and positioning themselves as the preferred groups for hire by politicians.
In Mombasa for example, so aggressive has the positioning become that the youth are now engaging in open violence and even killing each other just to position themselves better.
This situation is unacceptable as it points towards a violent electioneering period whose impact will be loss of lives and destruction of property.
Time has come to reign in on politicians and demand that they desist from dividing the masses.
Kenyans have paid dearly in the past and went through some of the worst chaos in its history as a result of careless political utterances. We must learn from the past and use the lessons to prepare for the future.
Any politician who engages in dangerous divisive politics must be immediately interdicted. The National Cohesion and Integration Commission must do its job to tame politicians lest we end up with many dead in the upcoming elections.
