State goodies will not sway Coast voters

Three successive general elections are enough to deduce a region’s political inclination and electoral behaviour.

Every election, the Coast region is listed as a hunting ground for both the government of the day and the opposition.

Yet since 2002, the region always votes for the opposition overwhelmingly.

In 2002, opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki garnered 228,915 votes (62.7 percent) while Uhuru Kenyatta, the government candidate then, got 121,645 votes (33.4 percent).

The opposition beat President Kibaki in 2007, polling 353,773(59.4 percent) against his 197,354 (33.1 percent).

2013 gave Raila Odinga an even more resounding victory, gathering a whopping 612,057 votes (75 percent) compared to Kenyatta’s 158,058 (19 percent).

Nothing momentous has happened between 2013 and now that can point to a significant change in the electoral behaviour of Coast’s population.

I can’t see Jubilee’s fortunes jump from a 19 per cent performance index in 2013 to more than 33 per cent, the best a pro-government candidate has ever polled since 2002.

Coast residents tend to associate themselves with candidates with pro-poor political transformations in the agenda.

Locals strongly believe they have suffered high poverty levels due to our capitalistic system in which the rich continue getting richer and the poor get poorer.

NOT EASILY SWAYED
Our people believe State goodies are their rights, anyway.

They believe it is a case of “returning our stolen wealth” and are, therefore, unlikely to be swayed simply by a passing cloud in the name of new development initiatives.

Yet, we want the development to finally come to our villages and towns because we also pay taxes like other Kenyans.

Lighting our towns to enable us do business at night is a good thing, deserved by a tax-paying business population.

It is our right to also have land documents as this corrects injustice meted against our people by former regimes.

It will require years of correcting our people’s grievances for this to translate into a shift in political inclinations.

The forthcoming coming by-election in Malindi, Kilifi County, presents a perfect platform to prove that Cord’s dominance in the region has not suffered a dime.

Statistically speaking, the odds are in favour of Cord.

In 2013, four out of the seven parliamentary seats went to ODM.

Two went to URP and Federal Party of Kenya, and the other one to Kadu Asili, a party regarded to be locally owned.

PERSONAL CHOICE

In Malindi, the winner, Dan Kazungu, now Cabinet Secretary, polled 16,679 votes against a combined 8,713 votes strength of both TNA and URP candidates.

My submission is that Malindi will be like the by-election in Kajiado Central last year.

The people will not be swayed by one of their own having been appointed to the Cabinet.

They will consider the decision to abandon the Opposition bandwagon a personal choice with personal benefits as opposed to a community decision with communal benefits.

The Swahili people say, “Usiache mbachao kwa msala upitao.”

The forthcoming polls will bring to a political duel of county leaders who are alive to the people’s aspirations against individuals seeking personal aggrandisement to raise their dwindling political fortunes in 2017.

Mr Mwambire is the Kilifi Assembly Deputy Speaker and county ODM vice-chairman