Politics, just like economics, is one of the key factors that determine the sharing of national resources. The only difference between the two is that in countries with elective politics, such as Kenya, the populace has a direct say in who controls political levers.
These, in turn, determine the economic policies, and by extension fortunes, of the people and the country. When citizens cast their ballots, they are in effect delegating their power and authority to political players and mandating them to take actions that will have implications on the economy.
When, for instance, Azimio One Kenya Coalition went to court to seek a declaration that they were the majority party in the National Assembly, one of their arguments was that the will of the people was expressed when they cast their ballots in the August 2022 election.
They will they expressed, the coalition argued, was that whereas Kenya Kwanza Alliance would produce the presidency (also head of the Executive), Azimio was to produce the dominant party in Parliament (hence head of the Legislature).
Although the court agreed with the coalition, this ruling was rendered null on the grounds that a shift in political alliances after the election had made Kenya Kwanza the majority party. This was the argument that was advanced by Speaker Moses Wetangula when he overruled the high court.
Not long after, one of the dominant parties in Azimio, ODM, ditched the coalition and threw its fortunes with Kenya Kwanza. As a result, the party was given five Cabinet slots and last week, was further rewarded with the leadership of at least five House committees, including the powerful Budget Committee.
Later this week, it is set to reap even higher dividends with the naming of its allies to various Permanent Secretary positions. And this brings me to the point I wish to prosecute; that voters get disillusioned every time political parties as well as elected representatives, change their tune after elections and cross the floor without seeking fresh mandate from the electorate as required by law.
The result is a form of political impunity that blurs the lines of who is in government and who is out. For instance, it is more of an oxymoron for ODM to control the Budget, the Public Accounts and the Public Investments Committees. The first is reserved for the majority party while the latter two are a preserve of the minority party.
The minority party, by definition, is expected to scrutinize how the government allocates and spends public resources. However, under the current system, it is now holding the knife and proverbial yam, and will, much later, determine whether the yam was distributed fairly or whether money was corruptly misdirected in the process.
Such aberrations in governance are responsible for the declining voter turn-out that Kenya has been experiencing since the 2007 elections. Remember that Mr Raila Odinga of ODM disputed the results and was eventually appointed Prime Minister following the February 2008 handshake that ended the post-election violence.
This culminated in the formation of the Grand Coalition Government. Ahead of the next election in 2013, the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission reported that it had registered 14.3 million voters against a target of 18 million and blamed this on “voter apathy”.
What that meant is that there were eligible Kenyans who opted not to register as voters in part because they were disillusioned with the political system and were therefore apathetic. When the election was held, a staggering 85.9 per cent of the voters cast their ballots in the presidential race.
In the 2017 election, the turnout reduced to 79.5 per cent in the presidential election and the following year, President Uhuru Kenyatta had a handshake with Mr Odinga that informally ushered him into the national government.
Come 2022, the turn-out reduced even further, to a low of 64.77 per cent, indicating that more registered voters were not seeing the point of turning up early to vote of the political rivals were going to close ranks after the elections.
Last week, Mr Odinga again signed a 10-point agreement with President William Ruto that effectively made ODM part of government, the same ODM that had gone to court to argue that the will of the people was made evident in August 2022, not in subsequent post-election re-alignments.
Given this trend, therefore, it is not too exaggerated to argue that voter turn-out is expected to fall below 60 per cent in 2027. The question is: Will Gen Z voters buck the trend?
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