Why governors are weeping in the bathroom and more

Loyalty is the middle name of Kenya’s leaders elected on political party tickets — they are averse to the hopscotch of jumping between home, hearth and enemy perch.

Party cadre, bereft of the encumbrances of smartcards or membership identification, can vote three or four times to nominate candidates, changing T-shirts between polling stations, and wiping indelible ink off their index fingers for a clean election.

The full range of democratic practices in political parties this past week have included candidates piercing earlobes with bullets, checking into hospital with broken fingernails, rescuing themselves from botched abductions, and reappearing sans a memory of where they were.

SHIFTING LOYALTY
Voters have had their Catharsis, exacting vengeance on their leaders at the dress rehearsal for the August 8 General Election, but selecting the team to face the opposition is no trial run — it is a matter of deep political strategy.

Bamboozling names like Bazooka, Babayao in a party primary carry great entertainment value, but they are not nearly enough to capture electoral victory.

Bloated egos have been squandering scarce resources on self-delusory campaigns so that they can lose the election for the party.

Some of the people putting themselves forward for election on party tickets are closet moles who will be defecting and pledging loyalty to the enemy as soon as they collect their first pay check.

IRREGULARITIES

They have to be neutralised before knocking them off the ballot and marching the parties into battle.

All that resource, energy and violence could have been channeled to containing and managing the real opponents who contest on other tickets or as seasonal independents.

Under these circumstances, some people still want governors, who have been earning a salary and presiding over billions of shillings in allocated resources, treated as enemies of the party.

Crybabies are citing massive irregularities, quailing impotent in the face of disappearing returning officers, and opponents declaring themselves elected.

They are only exposing themselves before the enemy with their irritating calls for internal democracy.

TESTING GROUND

The premature adulation over fake candidates winning by 2,000 votes in a constituency where more than half the voters do not show up at the polls is misplaced.

Ultimately, these political weaklings all go back to the party leader for assistance.

That is when lists have to be revised to correct erroneous voting by peasants and urban idlers who have no idea how to win the main election.

Nominations are merely a testing ground for true leadership.

It is a test of sportsmanship when two candidates receive nomination certificates to test their stress tolerance levels.

After the practice with various political tools, honing them, polishing them before applying them on political opponents.

CAMPAIGN FUNDS
Anyone who does not like the lie of the land can go sit on a pin.

As it were, the Registrar of Political Parties, substantively in office since 2007 but holding the forte in an acting capacity for the past six years, has been promptly punishing defectors as soon as they are reported for disloyalty by allowing them to remain in post in an attempt to reconcile them to their sponsors.

Money that should have been allocated to political parties to enable them to manage democratic processes comes in a trickle, and only to three of the registered 59.

Big entities like the Orange Democratic Movement’s Ababu Namwamba, who had demonstrated his loyalty to the party as secretary general by taping the party leader’s conversations, exercised his freedom of movement, and became a role model for his The National Alliance counterpart, Onyango Oloo, who has sought nomination to vie for a National Assembly seat on an ODM ticket.

And people still ask why a political party issued 400 direct nominations, or big time governors are weeping in the bathroom.

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