Kenyans
went through a period of enhanced continuous voter registration that
ended on Tuesday, April 28. Almost two million new voters were registered, with
Nairobi and Kiambu leading the pack of the counties.
The
enhanced continuous voter registration period has lapsed today, with more than 1.8
million new voters already listed by the electoral body, IEBC. The exercise,
which began on March 30, had targeted at least 2.5 million new voters. It
appears from a glance that the IEBC overestimated the number of citizens not
yet registered as voters.
In
the alternative, it is imperative to note that the publicity and mobilisation
might not have been undertaken effectively. During these events that IEBC has
conducted regularly, the political class has come out more loudly to sensitise
Kenyans to register.
However, political leaders have partisan
interests and therefore cannot be relied upon to support the process
objectively. Recent events have shown that aspiring and sitting political
leaders get actively involved in the exercise solely to woo supporters for their selfish interests. What the political leaders are engaged
in, even though they support IEBC endeavours, is political education as opposed
to civic education.
Civic
education arises from the early concept and contemporary practice of
citizenship. Citizenship is the legal status and relationship between an
individual and a state, granting specific rights — such as voting, protection and residency — alongside responsibilities such as obeying laws, paying taxes and contributing to society. It defines a person as a member of a political
community, often acquired by birth or through naturalisation.
It derives
from the classical Greek city-states. In Aristotelian theory, every citizen
would gather at the city square, deliberate and make decisions on the city’s
affairs. Citizens usually enjoy full civil and political rights, including the
right to live, work and vote in the country.
Citizenship
involves responsibilities such as civic participation, obeying laws and
sometimes national service. To undertake these responsibilities and discharge
the duties effectively, every citizen requires a special set of skills and
knowledge.
Good citizens exhibit virtues such as responsibility, integrity,
compassion and respect, translating into actions such as obeying laws, voting,
paying taxes, volunteering and respecting diversity. They prioritise community
welfare over personal gain, fostering social harmony and building a resilient
society. Key qualities include being informed, law-abiding and active in the
community. Being morally upright, trustworthy and truthful
is their default setting.
Based on a common philosophical framework, which
is often attributed to a modern interpretation of Greek political thought, the
three primary types of people in society are citizens, tribalists and idiots.
Citizens are individuals who engage in public life, prioritise the common good,
understand their rights and responsibilities, and work towards building
inclusive, functional communities.
Tribalists or tribesmen comprise individuals whose loyalty and perspective are limited to their
specific tribe, ethnicity, religion or group. They view the world through a
"us versus them" lens and tend to trust only those within their own
group.
In this context, idiots are considered private individuals who are
entirely self-centred, focusing only on private pleasure or gain, and not caring
about the wider community or its rules.
Civic education is the deliberate
effort and process of developing quality citizens. This can only be done
effectively by nonpartisan and professional players. Political leaders should
offer supporting cast roles. Therefore, the IEBC and similar organisations
should be tasked and facilitated to provide this noble service.
In life, a society must make conscious decisions on the type of leader citizens must
have. The type of leaders a society has determines whether it progressively
develops or regresses and remains backward.
Among the citizens exist thinkers
and intellectuals who are philosophers focused on equality and humanity.
Then there are professional traders who operate the machinery of society,
sometimes acting as elites. Those with limited access to resources and rights
constitute the oppressed. This duty of selecting good leaders can only be
undertaken prudently by citizens.
As has
been shown above, citizens must be nurtured and given the right mental tools to
be productive. In Kenya, the selection and appointment of public officers to
political offices have been compromised by tribalism and nepotism. The tribe
has become the bastion of political mobilisation since the struggle for Independence.
Jaramogi Oginga Odinga mobilised the Luo community to join with Jomo Kenyatta’s Kikuyu
community in Kanu. Daniel Moi organised his Kalenjin ethnic
communities to combine forces with Ronald Ngala’s Giriama and Masinde Muliro’s
Luhyia communities, respectively under Kadu.
Kenyatta and Oginga won the
ensuing elections under the unitary manifesto against the Majimbo ideology of
regionalism promoted by Moi and Ngala. What is crucial is that the tribes under
Kadu were brought together by the fear of the erstwhile big tribes – Kikuyu
and Luo. This dichotomy would come to haunt the national unity initiative when
Oginga fell out with Kenyatta in 1966.
The
events that followed the dissolution and assimilation of Kadu by Kanu led to the reconfiguration of the political architecture of the country. Kenya soon after
became a one-party state in practice.
To contain the rebellion of the Luo
community, the Kenyatta administration marginalised them by excluding them from government leadership and administration. Development projects were never
taken to Nyanza, thereby making the region lag and remain backward.
Eventually, under Moi as president, the country became a de jure one-party state
in 1982.
The
height of the official one-party system was the infamous mlolongo method of
voting. The method significantly reduced the civil rights of citizens and their civic duties and responsibilities. When multiparty system was later reintroduced in 1992, the tribe once again became the focal point of
political mobilisation. Voting was done along ethnic fault lines.
Tribalism
soon degenerated into barbarism and every election witnessed violent reactions.
In 2007, matters came to a head when the presidential election results were
disputed and led to unprecedented post-election violence. It took the
intervention of the international community to calm nerves through the
formation of the grand coalition government in 2008.
When the dust settled,
thousands of lives had been lost, hundreds of persons displaced and maimed.
Millions of shillings worth of property had been destroyed and lost. It was the
clearest demonstration of extremely low-quality citizenship close to savagery.
The
challenges facing citizens that compromise their ability to make rational
choices at the ballot can be largely attributed to lack of proper mentorship
into citizenship. The reliance by national institutions on political
leaders for civic education has curtailed the effectiveness of the process.
The
citizens cannot elect quality leaders because they rely on the same for
direction. This logically leads to inability to hold the leaders accountable
for their mandates. This has made the political leadership generally mediocre
and uninspiring.
While the citizens wish for a transformative leadership at the
political front, they lack the virtues of good citizens to make such monumental
decisions. Voting, which starts with registration and concludes at the ballot
booth when a voter casts their vote, has been watered down. It is taken more to
be a political responsibility than a civic duty.
Stakeholders should reassess
the process with a view to making it more civic than political. This will
rightly place the role of citizen development through civic education on institutions such as IEBC, instead of the political leadership.
The writer is a political and policy analyst
