We don’t always elect leaders who are best for our interests

A voter casts his ballot at Kianjai Primary School in Tigania West on April 26, 2017 during the Jubilee Party nominations. Elections provide the best chance for renewal, for new ways of thinking and doing. PHOTO | PHOEBE OKALL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • People don’t always elect the best people to lead them.
  • If we elect people because of their eloquence, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

It can be assumed that by now the majority of Kenyan voters have already made up their minds about the political leaders they intend to entrust their country with for the next five years.

Indeed, barring an earth-shaking occurrence in the remaining official campaign period (exactly 10 days today), very few people are likely to be swayed by what they are told by the contenders for the various positions ranging from ward representatives to president.

CAMPAIGN
However, one can expect that the chicanery, dirty tricks, back-stabbing, treachery and venom that characterise political campaigns the world over will go on here unabated, and perhaps a few lost souls will at last decide whom to vote for even if, after all the hustle and manufactured excitement, they may end up asking themselves why they bothered.

But what almost everybody who has not been profiting from the campaign loot will agree with is that it is high time this whole thing was behind them.

DEMOCRACY

I don’t know about you, but I feel that four and half years of ceaseless demagoguery on the hustings can wear anyone down, and I am one of those who sometimes wish elections were held after every 20 years, if at all.

Idle thought, you could say, and of course you would be right.

We are a democracy after all, or at least we go through all the motions in the rituals after every five years, mainly because there is no better way to replace a government that has breached its covenant with the governed.

FUNCTIONS
Elections play two useful functions. First, they provide a catharsis, giving vent to pent-up emotions and frustrations.

If, for instance, a particular government was elected on the strength of promises it made and failed to deliver, there is nothing more satisfying than to give it a well-deserved kick on the backside. That can only happen during polls.

RENEW

The second function is that they provide an alternative vision for the future.

They provide the best chance for renewal, for new ways of thinking and doing.

If a government stays in power for too long, it can’t easily change its ways and maintaining the status quo becomes its only goal.

PARTNERSHIP

Its ideas become fossilised and the rulers acquire a sense of entitlement, which is extremely dangerous.

Elections are also important in a third respect.

Omniscience is not a human trait, and once a ruling regime becomes convinced that it knows everything there is to know, atrophy sets in and there is little development in any area of human endeavor.

RAW DEAL

In other words, if a government insists that only it knows what is best for you, why should you struggle to better your life?

Having established the need for periodic changes in a country’s governance through the secret ballot, one question that we must ask is whether people always get the governments they vote for.

The simple answer is no. People don’t always get the political leadership they deserve and they do not always elect the best people to lead them.

MANIFESTO
For instance, we are going into an election in which two main political entities, Jubilee and Nasa, are contending for power.

In those organisations are people with good ideas for this country, some of them eminently practicable, while others belong to the realm of cloud cuckoo land.

But away from the organisations are men and women of great vision, people we shall never elect into office.

QUALIFIED

We listen to them articulate intelligent solutions to imponderable problems, yet never give them our vote, which means they will never get a chance to implement any of those ideas.

In that sense, democracy is a chancy and wasteful concept.

If we elect people because of their eloquence, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

VALUE

If we elect them because they can attract overwhelming numbers of their tribesmen and women, we may get the same results.

If we elect them because they can mobilise greater resources than everyone else with which to push their message, then we may find ourselves in even greater trouble.

And if we elect them because they can lie to us more convincingly than everyone else, then sooner or later we are going to discover just how gullible we were.

Isn’t there any other way in which we can get to know the leadership that is best suited for us and our countries? Must elections always be a gamble?

Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor [email protected]