Opinion polls should focus on issues

Opinion polls have lately been a popular yardstick to measure the popularity of political players and their parties not only in the country but in the region and even internationally. These polls, however, especially coming from pollsters who have built their credibility over time, have had a tendency of not only indicating preference trends but also the shape and focus the thinking of a nation and its people.

A deliberate effort should, hence, be made to conduct and release polls that direct public debate towards development issues, which are really important to our people.

There has been an unhealthy bias for opinion polls to concentrate on political personalities, so much so that little time is given to what really counts.

On Thursday, the finding of one such poll was released. Though important in educating the public on what citizens think of their leaders, one gets the notion that its timing was wrong.

It comes out at a time when the country is just recovering from heightened tensions emanating from fever-pitch warmongering by a section of leaders. This was not the right thing to do. We should have focused on national cohesion and unity.

Barely a year to a national election, the nation should ideally be deliberating on how its government has performed as far as the promises it made to its citizens are concerned.

And the promises were many.

A look at the Jubilee manifesto should, for instance, form the basis of national debate. The pollsters ought, for example, to have sought to find out how the government has delivered on the general subject of the economy. Are Kenyans better off economically than they were some four years ago? Is it easier to do business in the country now than before? Are the government’s fiscal priorities leading to better standards of living?

Opinion on these issues is likely to be as divided as any, but an honest analysis will give a general view. There have been obvious blunders in implementation of some projects that were the flagship of the current government’s pre-election contract with the electorate. But a lot has been achieved, albeit under the water, as it were. We have the Standard Gauge Railway coming, rural electrification, school pupils can start typing their way through their assignments, having been given free tablets and many more projects that are never mentioned!

TRANSFORMED COMMUNITY

A recent visit to my village, for instance, revealed a truly transformed community from one I had seen some two years ago. My aging mother could recharge her phone without having to walk the two kilometres to the shopping centre for the same service. She could watch her favourite Tanzanian singer Rose Muhando and other gospel music videos in the comfort of her sitting room without having to charge a used motor vehicle battery as was the case with most village ‘elites’ three years earlier.

Of course this comes with a catch in that the power supply in the villages and the county in general is very erratic, but with more investment in geothermal and solar promised by the government, we hope it will fade off the stage soon.

Such challenges and the will to overcome them will certainly provide the platform for the Jubilee government to act and hopefully, inspire the opposition to take them head-on and leave the voters as the ultimate winners.

The road network in the country has also seen tremendous improvement, though we are not exactly where we ought to have been by now.

And is devolution working? Not perfectly. Is the standard gauge railway project on course? Be the judge.

The government must set the bar high in service delivery. But we should not allow the pollsters to fire the gun in the air and lock our leaders out of the negotiation room. Their leverage is how much damage a messy poll would inflict on Kenya’s unity and a peaceful General Election.

Michael Cherambos is a social commentator based in Nairobi.