Media a big problem in Kenya’s politics

It looks like Jubilee grandees are familiar with a phenomenon in psychology called the “illusory truth effect” — the idea that if you repeat something often enough, people gradually begin to believe it is true.

They also understand that words are powerful drugs and that we in the media eat them up like hippos in a spring valley. At the party’s big bash at Kasarani in Nairobi last week, the speakers’ lofty words effused great fantasy laced with vaguely religious ecstasy.

“This is a blessed and historical meeting,” Deputy President William was quoted as saying. “What is happening here is historical. We have brought together different political parties and Kenyans from all parts of the country to unite.” (He meant “historic”.)

“From today, it does not matter your tribe or religion,” gushed Senate Majority Leader Kithure Kindiki. “It does not matter whether you are a woman, youth or elderly; what now matters is what contribution you make towards improving our country.”

Kindiki’s National Assembly counterpart Aden Duale travelled even further into dreamland: “We want the President to retire in 2022 knowing that he has united all Kenyans. We are telling our other colleagues [in the opposition] that the dice is cast. What we are witnessing today is a journey that will make President Kenyatta re-elected in 2017 and Mr Ruto in 2022.” (He meant that the “die is cast”, but maybe we misquoted him.)

Do these men really believe what they are saying? This self-satisfied bombast flows from a misreading of the mood of Kenyans and seeks to mask the revolting opportunism of defectors and others behind the Jubilee project, which is disturbing on so many levels that one does not know where to start.

Let us focus on two issues. First, the Jubilee merger weakens democracy by suppressing diversity of opinion in the political arena, and it clashes with the principles of devolution and regional autonomy. It does this mainly through its grotesque mimicry of Kanu-era politics that projects Nairobi as the main driver of progress, with ethnic chieftains trampling one another to seek favours from the centre.

Regional autonomy or local control is supposed to make the centre less significant and blunt the kind of ethnic competition that led to the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

SOOTHING IDEALS

If regions are managing their own affairs at the local level, the ethnicity of the man in State House should not be important. In theory, local control makes government bureaucrats more responsive to residents’ needs, facilitates citizens’ participation in decision-making, mutes the concentration of power in Nairobi, and brings economic development to previously “marginalised” regions.

Rather than working to entrench local control, the Jubilee project sounds like a parallel force competing with devolution. What is wrong with having several regional parties that advance the rights and aspirations of the people of those areas?

Second, what is Jubilee’s true ideology? The assertions that the party wants to “unite Kenyans” and “bring development” are soothing ideals, but they do not amount to a set of beliefs that would set it apart from its competitors.

In a normal country with established democratic institutions, political actions or programmes spring from deeply held principles on which party leaders and members cannot compromise. What are the Jubilee leaders’ convictions?

Where does Jubilee stand on strengthening devolution, the environment and uncontrolled urban growth, taxes on working people and corporations, women’s health (including the right to abortion), the rights of minority groups (gays, atheists, etc), wages for the working class, retiree benefits, access to affordable education and quality health care, East African regional integration, and Kenya’s relationship with China?

These are among the issues Kenyans care about and that Jubilee politicians should be discussing, but we did not hear about them at Kasarani. All we heard was how Jubilee-allied politicians plan to grab power and hold onto it into the foreseeable future.   

But Jubilee is not entirely to blame. The media are a big part of the problem. The Kenyan daily press is condemned to merely reacting to events, not setting the agenda. The agenda is set by the people we cover: the badly written press releases that arrive conveniently by email in reporters' inboxes, the staged press conferences, the pre-announced opposition protests.

Our politicians know too well how we work. When Raila Odinga claims that Jubilee has hired South Korean techies to help it manipulate the 2017 elections, reporters and editors do not ask for evidence — they instinctively publish the wild claims.

Our test for what constitutes political news seems to be that a big name has spoken and we must publish whatever he says. Unfortunately, this is not news — it is propaganda.

The writer is an online sub-editor at Nation Media Group. [email protected].