Dear Kenyans, it is time we set out to find our Leicester City

Very few people in Kenya can pronounce Leicester, leave alone locate the city on the map of England. Fewer still have ever heard of Max Verstappen.

Yet when the soccer’s English Premier League season came to a close last Sunday (bar the postponed but now dead-rubber Manchester United-Bournemouth clash set for tonight), Leicester City had already been crowned the improbable winners of the coveted trophy.

How a team more accustomed to battling relegation beat out the traditional giants like Manchester City, Manchester United, and Chelsea is already a fairy tale bound to be repeated for generations.

Then there was Verstappen, who on the same Sunday sensationally won the Spanish Formula 1 motor race, capping his start with the Red Bull team by becoming the youngest-ever victor on the Grand Prix circuit.

The tyro had already scored a first when he debuted last season as the younger-ever Formula 1 driver at the tender age of 17, driving for Red Bull’s junior Toro Rosso team. He started this season with Toro Rosso but before the fifth race in Barcelona, he was promoted to the main Red Bull team and delivered in spectacular fashion.

No doubt the route to the podium was eased by the first-lap collision that knocked out the favourites, Mercedes rivals Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, but that does not take away the magnitude of Verstappen’s achievement.

On his way to victory, he locked out much more experienced Red Bull teammate Daniel Ricciardo as well as the Ferrari duo of former world champions Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen.

ALL DREAMS ARE VALID

So what do Leicester (for the uninitiated, closer to Les-ter rather than Lei-ces-ter) and young Max have to do with us?

What our very own Lupita Nyong’o told us in her Oscar Award victory speech, that all dreams are valid.

Our politicians are well into their premature and as usual divisive campaigns. And it looks like we are set for yet another Kenyatta-Odinga duel, indicating that instead of our democracy evolving, it has remained rooted on the same spot since independence.

Must we forever be condemned to replays of the political contests of half-a-century ago? Must the heirs of the independence campaign titans-turned-political foes continue to torment the rest of us with their inane blood feuds?

Kenya will only progress when the quest for leadership shifts from the Kenyatta-Odinga, Kikuyu-Luo rivalries, and the supporting cast of the Kalenjin swing vote, to contenders who sell their ideology and policy prescriptions rather than just their ethnic bulwarks.

Since the return of multi-partyism many candidates have stepped forward to present themselves as third-party options, but made nary a dent in the equation.

The problem is not shortage of candidates with appealing programmes, but that the vast majority of Kenyans are like mindless sheep, following ethnic kingpins even to their own death and destruction.

GOING HAMMER AND TONGS

President Uhuru Kenyatta, at the head of the Jubilee ticket, and putative Cord coalition candidate Raila Odinga are already going hammer and tongs at each other.

Neither care a hoot that they are managing only to fertilise the ground for pre- and post-electoral violence while solidifying their respective bastions.

Kenya is bigger than the Kenyatta and Odinga dynasties. It is bigger than the predatory Kikuyu-Kalenjin hegemony or the resentment of the excluded Luo.

Perhaps it is time we all as Kenyans who love our country made this the election that renders ethnic warlords irrelevant.

If we want Kenya to prosper and thrive as a united nation, the greatest gift we can bequeath our children is untying the shackles to ethnic mobilisation and supporting the candidates who have the policies and programmes required to drive this country to the next level.

We must all remove the blinkers and search out the candidates who truly love this country, the ones offering superior solutions to our myriad problems, and the ones who appeal for our votes beyond the narrow tribal prism.

Please step forward if you want my vote on a platform that is not rooted in the same old dirty, banal ethnic lens.

Let us all determine that we will reject being herded into ethnic laager and give every prospect, even the rank outsider, a fair hearing. That is when we will find our Leicester City come 2017.

[email protected]. @MachariaGaitho on Twitter