As the time ticks every second closer to March 4, 2013, I keep asking myself whether my overzealous, over-confident, passionate and over-enthusiastic presidential candidates and their supporters have stopped one day to ask themselves where and how they will manage their over-size egos and impractical expectations respectively, incase of a loss after the forthcoming elections.
This subject bothers my conscience because both history and experience has taught us that there is nothing as dangerous as a humiliated god, and as lethal as his or her supporters in moments of a publicly announced loss. We all know that it is not easy to let go of a political dream that has taken years to put together and several months to sell to the electorate, especially for presidential candidates for whom a loss would mean taking their party manifestoes to libraries, shredders and dust bins.
Listening to speakers in the last presidential debate, and speeches by most political leaders at campaign rallies, it is interesting that every presidential candidate expects his party to win the forthcoming elections by a landslide. It does not help the situation when latest opinion polls put the two leading coalitions of Cord and Jubilee at par in terms of popularity. The relevant question that sometimes we fear asking is where these leaders get the data to back their anticipated overwhelming victory confidence.
Whereas I disagree with Karl Marx in his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of religion when he says that “religion is the opium of the masses” and merely a tool to control people to do good, I am deeply convinced that politics is the hallucinogen of the electorate that causes voters to fear imagined ghosts and embrace speculative nirvana based on political superstitions and hocus pocus.
Superstitions as an extension of a people’s culture and belief system are good. But, political superstitions interpreted from events like the fall of a Mugumo tree, the flow of Rivers Chania and Nile, the shape of a political candidate’s head or prophesies from some untidy magicians from Tanga only produce mass mental fanaticism, blind ideological enthusiasm, un-informed party loyalty and moronic elections euphoria that are seldom associated with extreme stubbornness and dangerous pride that refuses to concede defeat even after being fairly beaten at the ballot.
Presidential candidates and their supporters must therefore be alive to the fact that as long as voters in rival parties and coalitions are not persuaded to desert their parties to the other side, and as long as there is no sweet scent of an ideological revolution that promises benefits and better lives to those who take part in it, there will be no landslide presidential elections victory in Kenya anytime soon.
My reason for this observation is because Kenyan voters especially those belonging to the two leading coalitions have and will always be influenced by the same motives, persuaded by the same propositions and therefore will still continue voting the same way.
The large hyper-loyal political following enjoyed by the two leading coalitions’ presidential candidates poses the greatest threat to peace in post-election Kenya. The two leaders, in view of their strong support bases appear to have cultivated egos that look like oversize balloons. When some of these candidates look at Kenyans in the face, all they see is their own reflections and nothing else. They seem to have outgrown the Republic of Kenya in size because of the sycophantic blowing of hot air into their egos by their supporters.
The presidential candidates have surrounded themselves with men and women who only tell them what they want to hear. People calling themselves advisors who are persuaded more by tittles, pay-cheques and proximity to imagined power than by facts. The word losing elections is a taboo to their lips and a curse in their minds. Such candidates live in bubbles created by them, and lived as reality. Unfortunately, some of these utopian bubbles and ego balloons have to burst after elections when Kenyans go to the polls. But, are they ready for the burst?
My advice to all aspirants in the forthcoming elections especially presidential candidates is to pick up from where they left before the campaigns began. They should peacefully and honorably go back to their offices if they will still be having any. They should buy airtime and make phone calls to those who won and those who lost.
They must psychologically prepare themselves for those who will meet them on the streets several weeks, months and even years later and comment: “That is the K’Okoth who lost in last elections”.It is becoming clear by the passing of every day that either Raila is going to Bondo to grow cotton at his Apoda farm, or Uhuru is going back to Gatundu to attend to his coffee bushes. And, it is life and life must continue without ill-feelings or prejudice. They can always rise up, dust themselves, look up, produce posters and fight another day.
K’Okoth Sylvestre is an Agribusiness policy consultant and Director with Kenya Agribusiness Policy Centre, based in Nairobi. (kokoths@yahoo.co.uk)
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