![]() The chattering classes are appalled that so vacuous a narrative as the “hustler” and the “wheelbarrow” has gained enough traction with a wide section of, in particular, the youthful population. More importantly, there is no other compelling hopeful narrative. In 2022 this clarity is gone – emphatically so! The latter are in disarray while the former are resurgent.Īs we head into the August polls what is striking is that, beyond the avowedly populist but ultimately hollow “hustler” narrative, there is as yet no other game in town in the contest of political ideas. Prior to these two polls, there were clearly articulated political forces forged by Moi arrayed against the grand issues of the day and those who defined themselves for them – a mixture of the political opposition, media, civil society, the religious sector, etc. They did the same in 2017 – no big idea, just spending – but this time round, the 2017 election failed dramatically after the Supreme Court annulled it, leading to a legitimacy deficit for the Jubilee government. The “dynamic duo” promised to spend money, to spend on everything for everyone. Ruto sought the vote under a new constitution promulgated in 2010 and went to the polls under the heavy cloud of the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments. In the meantime, a host of new governance arrangements have come into being. We were voting for good governance, anti-corruption, human rights, transparency and all those other nice woolly things that have created the open society we enjoy today. We were voting against Moi’s authoritarianism and the one-party state, yes, but we were also voting for political pluralism, a new constitution and devolution. Since 1992, and in 19 in particular, our elections have not lacked what some like to call “the vision thing”. That so many of his foes have met an untimely end adds to this dark myth. ![]() As a bogeyman to the middle class, he has proven to be a good fit. Unfortunately for him, Ruto has in the past seemed to embrace and project his darker side, to revel in the fear he engenders. Today the very people who spewed that narrative are in wild reverse and the deputy president is the new bad guy in town. Ironically, in the 2007 election Raila Odinga was the bogeyman of Kenyan politics – the man to fear, the master of chaos, etc. That said, there are those who will be voting against either William S. This hasn’t happened since the reintroduction of political pluralism in late 1991 and the elections that followed in 1992. It would seem that Kenya is going into an election this August that’s largely about nothing.
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