This election will not be won on Facebook. Get off it!

PHOTO | FILE There is no polling station on Facebook or Twitter.

So you have spent the past three or so years yelling on Facebook and Twitter? I have good news for you. There is no polling station on Facebook or Twitter. You have spent the better part of this electioneering period shouting yourself hoarse on social media, today you must crawl out and stand up to be counted — and that can only happen at an electoral commission polling station.

This is the one opportunity for you, dear middle class Kenyan, to get off you iPad and smartphone and laptop and do something positive offline.

May the gods vote against you should you, despite the collective pleadings of a re-energised nation, stick to the blogosphere as the queue snakes its way outside your door.

The party primaries were a disturbing indictment of the lethargy of the Kenyan middle class in the electoral process. Away from holding highly charged debates on social media platforms, often heavily tribally nuanced, Kenya’s educated masses, who are supposed to be the piston of the nation’s political engine, have no presence in the political movement, yet it is here where issues of life and death are determined.

There is evidence that most of them do not belong to political parties, most of which are built around tribal demi-gods and the country club types.

An argument has been made that, had the middle class participated in the party primaries, the political direction in key counties such as Nairobi would have been changed forever.

But that, ladies and gentlemen, is water under the bridge. Today, even as I put my voter’s card to good use, I am concerned about the increasingly acidic discourse on Facebook, which oftentimes sags with hatred. There is something worrisome when a country hosts a huge army of insult-spewing young people engaged in primordial debates on Facebook about the relationship between leadership and foreskin and their alcohol consumption prowess. This from a people who should be more liberated and civil in their relationships.

It also reflects the inability of education to de-tribalise society.

Professionals in our midst have deployed their education in the service of the tribe. Yes, we have all been eaten up by negative ethnicity.

Kibaki, Raila, and Mutunga have delivered the Second Republic. My generation has a challenge. We must stop whining on qwerty keypads, get out, and do something for this country.

In 2007, young people all over the country voted with their grandfathers for the tribesmen. There are indications that they will follow the dictates of the tribal gods today. What a shame?

The signs are there. For the past couple of months, Otieno, Ngunjiri, and Kipkemboi have been at each other’s throats on Facebook and Twitter in defence of their tribal demi-gods. If we are to make any progress in building this great nation, if we are to achieve the ideal annual economic growth figures of the average emerging economy, we must look beyond our last names and those of the men and women who offer themselves for leadership positions. There is absolutely no other way around this, no matter what you may have heard from the campaign trail.

Four Kenyans will be tried at the ICC on suspicion that they bear the greatest responsibility for the post-election violence of 2007-8. The outcome of those cases lies in the hands of the judges. But this does not mean that the young people of this country should not be reminded that it was we who carried machetes and evicted our neighbours in the middle of the night.

Yes, that is right. In the course of my work as a journalist, I have had the misfortune of poring over thousands of images that our photographers brought in from the killing fields, and the common denominator throughout is that the machete-wielding hands, the fiery faces, belonged to the youth, people in the prime of their lives who should have redirected that energy to their potato farms and boda boda businesses.

The ICC documents make a lot of reference to youths. And, today, we cannot afford to go that direction again. We should not be used again.

There is concern about the language young people have been using on social media in their conversations about today’s election. We must be responsible in the manner in which we use these platforms during this period. Social media should be used to celebrate our diversity and spirit of fair play. Politicians come and go, but Kenya remains. Let us go out there and vote for Kenya.

— Emeka-Mayaka Gekara is a senior writer with the Nation Media Group