Did you survive the MaDVD Earthquake on Sunday, January 23? Bless you! For a week, the nation was gripped by fear and trembling after the ANC leader promised a seismic cataclysm of Old Testament proportions.
MaDVD’s announcement sparked a good laugh, with endless hilarious memes on social media, from people calling on the government to declare Sunday a holiday for public safety, to fake notices warning of chaos, deaths and loss of livelihoods.
It’s all politics. Nothing serious. Free entertainment. Pity those folks who get all worked up and sleepless over the mammoth crowds that turn up at the political rallies of a presidential aspirant they don’t like. Take it easy. Most of those wananchi only turn up for the fun and freebies. Not necessarily because they will vote for the politician. Many may not even have a voter’s card. Ask Bwana Chebukati.
That is how degraded our politics is. And everyone is fine with it. No one really expects their lives to improve after any election. Few believe the politician’s lofty promises of delivering heaven on Earth. Experience is the best teacher, and it has shown things are only likely to change for the worse. Ni wewe tu na Mungu wako. Across the land, there is diminishing faith in politics.
Talk of “issue-based politics” is just that – talk. The media has framed the 2022 General Election – like all the others before – as a contest between the bigwigs. The difference between this election and last ones is the personalities involved.
The parties are just vehicles for ascent to power. No competing visions of Project Kenya are on offer – or, to be more precise, the media has no interest in detailed exploration of political visions. Everything is about the race itself, winning and losing, by hook or crook.
The aspirant who tells one set of lies is given equal news space/time with the other who tells another set of lies, all in the name of balanced reporting. No attempt is made whatsoever by the watchdogs of society to expose those lies. It is up to Atieno to decide. Well, if Atieno is assumed to be sharp enough to decide for herself what is true from what isn’t, why does she need the media at all?
What conversations are “ordinary wananchi” having about the election? Hard to tell. Every day, the news headlines are about Raila this, Ruto that. The voices of Atieno, Mwikali and Kerubo have been drowned in the deafening cacophony of elite pacts and plots, strident rhetoric, closed door meetings; promises of Canaan, tsunamis and earthquakes; grandstanding, threats and so on. There is hardly anything in the news about what Atieno wants in this election.
The second and final phase of mass voter registration commenced on Monday, January 17, amid fears that, like the previous listing in October, the exercise could fail to hit its target due to widespread voter apathy.
The news stories around this unsurprising lack of interest in the most important activity on the nation’s political calendar are mostly about how leading presidential aspirants are battling for numbers by mobilising eligible citizens in their strongholds to register.
No one cares to find out exactly the cause of the apathy and why, even if they register, some voters may still be reluctant to turn out to cast their ballot on Polling Day.
If you want frank and fearless conversations about this election go to social media. A heated debate that erupted on the Facebook page of the Luo language TV station Nam Lolwe beginning Friday, January 21, is clear evidence the media must shift its lens from the elite battles to what “ordinary wananchi” are saying.
Nam Lolwe put up a post that ODM leader Raila Odinga while on tour of Homa Bay threatened to withdraw from the August poll if people in his Nyanza stronghold do not register in large numbers to vote. The comments tell a story you are unlikely to find in the fevered election coverage.
See you next week!
