SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2016
Deputy President William Ruto addresses a crowd in Kericho on February 17, 2016. There is something most Kenyans hardly understand. It is that most politicians perceive ordinary Kenyans as mere pawns in a larger political chess game. PHOTO | TONNY OMONDI | NATION MEDIA GROUP
This column cannot accurately express my hearty laughter when I read that the Deputy President had gone personal on Senator Gideon Moi.
Not only did he allegedly dismiss the Senator as uncircumcised, he went around attacking others with the hubris he usually puts on when he wants to belittle someone.
There is something most Kenyans hardly understand. It is that most politicians perceive ordinary Kenyans as mere pawns in a larger political chess game.
To them, the political game has nothing to do with us. Indeed, the game will go on with or without us.
Our views do not count. Since we are not part of the game, our presence is considered of total nuisance or merely as incidental to the whole political process.
Politics is, therefore, a game of the big boys. They are mostly male and moneyed.
Of course, there are a few females, preferably those related to this particular male power structure.
But they engage in the game on condition that they behave like the big boys and, where needed, defer to them.
Therefore, the rules are gendered and they privilege the boys.
Overall, the big boys see ordinary people as expendable and themselves as indispensable.
VOTE ENTITLEMENT
To be blunt, we are like toilet paper to them. Our role is to service their periodic fifth year visit to the toilet where we get dumped into the sewerage.
This explains why the big guys have a sense of entitlement to our vote. They own your vote. While they appreciate you have a right to cast it, they know they will determine whether the vote counts.
When they are not making sure your vote does not count, the boys have devised strategies to keep the vote safely in their corner.
They keep it in an ethnic hole where they are self-appointed gatekeepers. They view us like they do a herd of sheep.
We are supposed to be docile supplicants to their dictates, exhibiting every element of a herd mentality. And so, we sheepishly follow them to the guillotine.
What is funny is that one ethnic herd often expresses surprise that some other communities have rejected the herd mentality.
They loudly wonder how stupid they, in this case the Luhyia, do not prioritise an ethnic herd mentality.
Each time the DP has visited Luhyialand, he has aimed to remind them that they are silly to expect the presidency yet they do not like being herded by one ethnic boss-man.
It is for this reason he has been summoning some pretenders to Eldoret urging them to herd the community on his behalf.
The surprise the DP shows when rejected was in evidence last week.
EXPENDABLE
You see, our big boys get surprised when ordinary people suggest to them that the equation is the other way round; that we are indispensable and they are expendable.
This is what the Kericho voters seemed to be suggesting to the DP; they suggested that they have a large pool of politicians and parties to select from.
They tried this experiment with the MCA in Bomet and the reaction from the top was immediate and earth-shaking.
The DP came down to implore them but emphasised they should never embarrass him again.
Now they want to try it at the Senator level.
Annoyed at this unspeakable experiment by pawns who do not appreciate their place on the chessboard, the DP allegedly uttered insanities at his rival colleagues during the visit.
It is Thandika Mkandawire who writes about choice-less democracy.
He argues that in Africa, the big men believe in choosing their own voters. The DP, it seems, believes in this twisted logic.
For him, the turn for the Moi family to own the Kericho votes is long gone. He carries a sense of entitlement to your votes.
Godwin R. Murunga is a senior research fellow in the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi.
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