Political naivete and stupidity

Are you naive or stupid? In some quarters, if you didn't vote for a candidate such as Boniface Mwangi who stood in Starehe, or Martha Karua who stood in Kirinyaga, you will be thought of as naive and stupid. If you rejected Miguna Miguna and Peter Kenneth for Mike Sonko in Nairobi, you will be called naive and stupid. If you stayed with Ali Hassan Joho in Mombasa? Yes, you are naive and stupid. That is the elitist short hand for those who have all the answers abut the political leaders we need in order to change Kenya for the better.

Each Kenyan voter is responsible for the political leaders he or she voted for. No voter can recant their decision once the elected representatives or leaders pursue goals and objectives that are inconsistent with the promises they made during the election campaigns. Each voter made a conscious decision to vote for one candidate over another; they were not deceived or tricked. Each voter -- an adult, as required under law -- knew whom they were voting for, what they stood for, what they have done in the past and what they have promised to do once in office. No one cast ballots on their behalf. Each voter went into the polling booth as an individual and cast their ballot for their candidate. In short, each voter had agency and exercised his of her decision to vote for their preferred candidate alone.

Take the example of Miguna Miguna and Mike Sonko in Nairobi. On the surface, Mr Miguna is the better educated of the two, the more sophisticated thinker, the more articulate orator. On paper, Mr Miguna -- and not Mr Sonko -- should be the governor of Nairobi City. The majority of the voters of Nairobi City overwhelmingly chose Mr Sonko over Mr Miguna. By some standards, these voters will be called both naive and stupid because of their choice of Mr Sonko who was once jailed, escaped from prison, and fingered by the United States government as a drug kingpin, and who has elevated political antics to never-seen heights such as punching walls, "leaking" salacious photos of him with other elected representatives, taking sartorial liberties that have had him named in the Senate, and engaged in physical altercations with other elected representatives.

If you consider the voters who elected Mike Sonko as naive and stupid, you will have missed a important thing about their choice. Despite Mr Sonko's colourful, shall we say, personality and the troubling questions raised about his business affairs, he has always had a direct connection with the voters who elected him and their families. It is called "tokenism" in certain political platforms, but Mr Sonko's provision out of his pocket -- as he claimed -- of funeral, breakdown, limousine and public sanitation services for the City's lower classes was welcomed even by those who call his voters naive and stupid. 

Of course we should ask where he raises the funds for the "Sonko Rescue Team" and whether or not his various businesses contribute to the destruction of the lives of our young. If we must do that then we must do so for every one of those who asked for our vote. On the other hand, given that we did not seriously demand an accounting of the wealth of Mr Sonko' rivals in the general election, bar the innuendo and insinuations that accompany our elections, we must also ask what his rivals have done for the residents of Nairobi City. How many of them have established grassroots networks to provide the social services denied by their own government? How many have made multiple donations and contributions to families facing hunger and homelessness after fires have gutted their "informal settlements"? How many have publicly pledged to adopt a family beset by tragedy or done it at all? 

Tokenism it may very well be but politics is not the arena of the purist wishing for a political utopia. Mr Sonko knows this. His rivals have forgotten the lesson. His voters know this too. It is why they preferred him to his rivals. It is neither naive nor foolish to elect a man who has committed himself to solving some of your problems the best way that he knows. It would be, in my estimation, madness to vote for the man whose connection with you is limited to diatribes and harangues about the perfidy, stupidity and insincerity of his rivals. It is madness to vote for the incumbent whose tenure has been marked by higher City charges and fees, greater mounds of garbage, longer hours spent in traffic jams and the persistent stench of graft. It is foolhardy to cast your ballot for a carpetbagger who has been rejected in his own constituency and whose ego will not countenance a defeat at the nominations stage by the clown of Nairobi politics. For those who successfully elected Mike Sonko, their naivete and stupidity have resulted in a better outcome than could have been imagined by "smart" and "informed" choices.

It is an arrogance bordering on the insulting to presume that political leadership should be reserved only for "deserving" candidates with the right academic and business pedigree. The people have a funny way of disregarding the elites' received wisdom. They will make choices on what candidates do for them. Mr Sonko may not be Nairobi City's dream governor but, in his own inimitable way, he has done more for them than all the other candidates put together. There is nothing naive or stupid about that.