Tribal, social and economic class to determine 2017 elections

The Great Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov is famous for his research on conditioning and one such experiment was the one on "conditioned reflex”. The experiment involved the researcher ringing a bell whenever he would feed his dogs. It was later noted that the dogs would be salivating even in the absence of food because at all times they associated the ringing of the bell with food.

The 2017 elections bells are already ringing and the Kenyan political class is doing what they are best known for, clustering along tribal, social and strangely economic class. Their calculations are so amusing that one would be led into believing that they have the prophetic ability to tell what will happen in the next 20 years.

In the midst of all this circus one person holds the key to determining who gets what chunk when the beast is slaughtered. It is the voter who will have the last say and may be the last laugh in the voting process. Kenyan citizens, me included, are not answerable to any politician for their opinion on politics and leadership of the nation and those who think that just because one is a politician from a given tribe then he is guaranteed the votes of tribesmen are wallowing in fantasy and imbecile illusion.

What do you make of politicians whose items of trade are cheap vendetta and blind sycophancy at the expense of service delivery? What any Kenyan man or woman should know is that no one gets elected in a mob and therefore tribal or political groupings are just a waste of time. Who knows what will happen in 2017 or even subsequent elections to warrant the kind of trash we are fed on to the effect of which tribe will unite with the other to win the elections.

Fellow citizens, the time is now and the answer is in the ballot box. Let’s show the proud politicians that we are the real power brokers who hold the knife and the yam and who will eventually decide to cut the politicians a piece if we so wish. The reason why our voting is by secret ballot is to enable citizens to vote their conscience without intimidation or threats from any quarters. The Kenyan nation owes nobody anything and so we should not be forced to reason the way politicians think. We should borrow a leaf from our USA brothers' issue-based politics and campaign so that an aspirant can tell us beforehand what they will do on say University education accessibility, heath care improvement, social welfare, reducing national debt and even Kenyan troops in Somali.

The rules of the game must change. There is no automatic candidate or automatic presidential aspirant any Kenyan who meets the stipulated requirements for any seat can vie even as a private candidate without being held at ransom by the ethnic-owned political parties. The time to decide the political path of our nation is here and the answer is in the polling booth.