When Mr. Okiya Omtatah was elected in 2022, his election as declared at several polling stations in Busia County. Several judgments of Kenya's superior courts have ruled that the election results at the polling station are final; the results at the county level declaring, for example, Mr. Omtatah to be elected as the Senator of Busia County, are tallies of the results from the polling stations within the county. If Mr. Omtatah wanted to ensure that he was not cheated of his victory, he would have had an agent to represent his interests in each of the 760 polling stations in Busia County.
Now Mr. Omtatah, and Chief Justice Emeritus David Maraga are eyeing the presidency. Mr. Omtatah is familiar with the cut-and-thrust of an election to the senate, though on a considerably smaller scale to that of a presidential election which in 2022 consisted of around 56,000 polling stations. Judge Maraga is not so lucky.
While he may have a clue as to the scale of a presidential election - after all, as Chief Justice he presided over a presidential election petition at which statistics were bandied about by the parties - he has not yet participated in a cutthroat contest such as the one a presidential election usually is. What little we know of his plans to secure victory in the presidential election does not inspire confidence.
The presidential election consists of the election results at each of the 56,000 polling stations as captured in Forms 34A, the tallies at the county level captured in Forms 34B, and the final tall at the national tallying centre captured in Form 34C. If he is well-prepared (and well-resourced), he will have at least one agent at the 56,000 polling stations, 47 agents at the county tallying centre, and a battery of agents, lawyers, political operatives and supporters at the national tallying centre to ensure that none of his votes is stolen. For this to be true, he needs to have started the onerous job of setting up from scratch a ground game to mobilise supporters who will volunteer time, resources and energy to support his candidature, whether he stands in the election as an independent or as a candidate sponsored by a political party.
Since he has not declared that he is a registered member of a political party yet, we shall assume that he is still mulling where to pitch his tent or he is seriously considering a dark horse campaign as an independent. Either way, he still needs a team to help him organise his campaign.
First, he needs forty-seven county team leaders. They will help him map the 290 and constituencies and identify the current 1,150 elected county assembly representatives, 290 constituency representatives, 47 county woman representatives, 47 senate representatives, 47 county governors and deputy county-governors, 47 speakers of county assemblies, 47 clerks of county assemblies, 47 county secretaries, and the nominated members of the National Assembly, Senate and County Assemblies, together with he political parties that sponsored them to the various legislatures, and the strength or weakness of the incumbents.
He will need all this baseline data to decide whether he should sponsor his own slate of candidates or poach the incumbents from the political affiliations they are members of. The dossiers will be voluminous and tedious to read. But read he must. This is not swotting for the Bar; its way more difficult than that.
Second, he will need to commission several polls to gauge his level of popularity at this point, to gauge the most resonant political questions that he can exploit, to gauge the level of support the incumbents enjoy, to gauge the level of opposition he is likely to face when the campaign is up and running, among a host of many other political issues.
Third, he will need to identify the sources of his campaign finances to pay for the cost of campaigning. County offices. County staff. County volunteers. Cars. Airplane tickets or charters. Airtime. Internet data bundles. Computers. Mobile phones. Meals. Hotel accommodation. Several thousand line items in a complex budget.
Fourth he will need to form a headquarters team of campaign staff. Lawyers (of course). Accountants. Personnel managers. Finance managers. Transport officers. Drivers. Bodyguards. IT technicians. Webpage developers. Telephone operators (or their modern-day equivalent). Mailroom gremlins. Secretaries. Personal assistants. Messengers. Dozens of jobs that have nothing to do with politics have to be staffed up over a matter of months.
Fifth, he needs to fashion a manifesto. The Message he will campaign on. The political brand he will fashion for himself. It is not just vibes and Inshallah. Professional politicians have been doing this for as long as he has been an adult. He is starting the race at the back of the pack and whether he can build a brand that can surpass the current brand in power is all a matter of intuition and storytelling. Judge Maraga is not an intuitive or natural storyteller.
So far, he appears happy to portray himself as a man who has announced that he intends to seek the presidency. He doesn't not appear to be doing much else. While there is a coterie of social media mavens and dingbats who will sing his praises to the moon and back, they do not appear to be a political campaign team of any sort. Time flies when you're in the aluminium siding business, as they say in the United States. If he is not careful, Judge Maraga will blink and find himself locked out of the ballot for want of a real political campaign strategy.
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