Alternative ways to pick best presidential candidate

Even after signing and depositing their coalition agreement with the Registrar of Political Parties, the National Super Alliance (Nasa – I don’t know why they are not called NSA) still has a monumental task ahead of them. This is how to select a presidential candidate for the upcoming General Election.

It is generally accepted that the four principals will sit together behind closed doors and agree on which one of them will get the ticket.

However, being the politicians that they are, each with the requisite ambitions, it is obviously not going to be an easy task.

The ruling party, Jubilee, is lucky that its presidential candidate is already known. But it is also facing problems selecting candidates for the powerful positions of governor in several key counties, Nairobi being one of them.

Jubilee has chosen to nominate its candidates through popular election by members. This has the risk of precipitating fallout within the party.

To overcome these difficulties, I wish to suggest two ways that candidates for the same seat may use to settle on who will run. Note that these are decision tools to be used by the candidates themselves without involving the party members.

NEGATIVE VOTING

The first method is borrowed from the popular television reality series, Survivor. In this programme, the contestants use negative voting. That is, they each vote for the person they want removed from the camp.

The logic is that if they were asked to vote the person to stay, each would vote for him/herself! The four Nasa coalition principals can do the same. Each one is asked to vote the person whom he thinks is least appropriate candidate.

The four votes are then counted and the person with the smallest number becomes the candidate. Notice that since this is negative voting, we are not looking for the largest number.

The second method is a management decision tool that takes the form of a league table. In this case, each candidate is compared to all the others, one at a time. The same way that, in a sports league, each team plays every other team, one at a time.

Now, the principals are: Kalonzo (K), Musalia (M), Raila (R) and Wetang’ula (W). Each one of them would be given a unique ballot paper on which to compare the others.

Thus Kalonzo is asked to compare, M vs R, M vs W and R vs W. In each comparison, he chooses the person whom he thinks is a better candidate.  The comparisons for Musalia are K vs R, K vs W and R vs W. Raila compares K vs M, K vs W and M vs W. Wetang’ula chooses between K vs M, K vs R and M vs R.

After the principals have done their respective comparisons, all the winnings are tallied and the one with the most is given the ticket. This is a more rigorous process that makes it necessary for the principals to think carefully about their colleagues.

Whichever method the Nasa principals settle on, I honestly don’t envy them. There is a big elephant in their room and it must be dealt with.