MARKETING AFRICA MAL 18/17 mal 18:17 online | Page 98

a party that will endorse you, having
demonstrated beyond the shadow
of doubt that you can be entrusted
with more bullion to siphon. Nothing
succeeds like fraud in Kenya.
Ochieng had so far failed to find any
connection between Kenyan parties
and the whole election process and
hence the reason why he had set
the essay question to try and get the
students to do some soul searching
and illuminate this dark area.
Ochieng is unclear as to how an
orange became ODM and later
CORD and finally NASA without
there being any party conference
deliberating on which direction Kenya
needed to move in and a detailed
manifesto crafted to explain how they
would take us there.
In the same vein he is not in a position
to explain how a banana went through
a convoluted path to eventually
resurface as Jubilee where every person
interested in leading this country must
join at the peril of being left out of the
bandwagon.
Now we have made the waters murkier
by introducing the Independents.
This group’s existence stems from a
supposed common allegation that they
were rigged out by their respective
parties. The narrative being that the
people overwhelmingly want them but
the parties do not.
In other words the parties that
participate in the national democratic
process are not themselves democratic.
So why have the parties in the first
place if the party officials are not
reflecting the will of the people in the
primaries?
We have always known that the
political party in Kenya is a well-
positioned business enterprise whose
sole purpose is to extort money from
aspirants. That is why they harp on
the need for six-piece voting pattern
as they guarantee the outcome in
96 MAL 18/17 ISSUE
‘‘ Ochieng was
already having a
bad day! It is funny
how one tends to
remember with clarity
insignificant dates of
events that happened
so long ago. One
would think that with
all the information
that bombards our
senses all day long our
filters would be more
effective.’’
given areas.
So the people do not actually vote for
the individual, they vote for the party.
Since the party is non-existent as we
have seen it means that the people are
actually voting for nobody and hence
the reason why we are unable to hold
anybody accountable for the poor
leadership.
Party primaries are an auction where
the prize goes to the highest bidder
unless the highest bidder is for some
reason undesirable to the auctioneers.
This phenomenon whereby the
highest bidder did not automatically
get the party ticket is what has given
rise to the Independents.
The mistake the Independents are
making is to assume that they have
something to sell assuming that the
people are the buyers. The people in
Kenya have long delegated the buying
function to the business enterprise
called the party and this is what the
Independents cannot stomach.
The Independents think they can
eliminate the middle man, the party
and go directly to the people as
vendors since it is quite clear it is a
game of resources. If they succeed
which is in itself an uphill task
without a grass-root network, it will
actually be very good for Kenya.
It would mean that for a change
people will have voted for a person,
presumably for his track record and
not through blind party allegiance. It
should also be noted that if you are
not in either NASA or Jubilee you are
effectively an Independent.
Things need to change in Kenya
and the time is nigh when we stop
voting as automated party robots
and actually interrogate why we are
choosing a particular individual. This
interrogation needs to cover the whole
spectrum of leaders from an MCA to
the President.
Ochieng laments that no party has
even bothered to try and sell a vision
for Kenya. They are so busy trying
to protect their enclaves, blaming
each other for real and imagined
shortcomings and blackmailing each
other over who gets the rights to rig.
We cannot even hope that the people
will have the last word on where
Kenya should be going because the
people are so clueless and they are
more than willing to be bought for a
pittance to vote unwisely on a matter
that so fundamentally affects their
lives.
Whoever said that the only constant
in life is change had evidently not
met any true Kenyan, we thrive in
stagnation and we fight change so
vigorously that we are willing to shed
blood not to change. Ochieng wonders
if any Kenyan even remembers the bad
old days of KANU.
We don’t seem to have learnt anything
or changed in over fifty years, we have
failed to harness and implement the
advantages of democracy as enshrined
in our new constitution: we have
regressed into tribal cocoons rather
than embrace nationalism and progress
- That is tragic!