The Kenyan election is an exact mirror of the Kenyan wedding. So identical are the two that one could plausibly swap the one for the other and no one would notice, to a point.
The resemblance begins with the two parties, the bride and the groom — or, the electorate and the politician.
Both are on a pretend tip, the electorate pretending to like the politician when they are only interested in his cash and any goodies he might dish out, and the politician pretending to care for the electorate when all he wants is to grab all he can from them, preferably without ever giving anything back.
The blackmailing of money out of friends is common to both. Just as the groom forces cash out of his friends to finance his wedding, so does the politician steal money from the public one way or another to pay for his campaign.
READ MORE
Those thinking that Ruto can be 'wantam' are daydreamers
Nakuru activists known for keeping government in check turn to politics
You see, elections are just like weddings in Kenya: they are not free. We are not communists, after all.
The two or so weeks to election day are the busiest on the Kenyan political calendar, and they are the equivalent of the stag and hen nights.
The politician — or groom — jumps into bed with as many other parties as he can, since electoral nomination certificates have been known to disappear shortly before the ballots are cast.
It pays, therefore, to have insurance of some sort, and cozying up to several other political parties allows the politician to cover his bases, just in case his chosen party ditches him at the last minute.
The electorate are also busy sleeping with everyone else on their hen night. They will shamelessly pledge to vote for ten different candidates, and will take money and political love from all of them.
Come election day, just like the wedding, buyer’s remorse sets in.
The electorate discover just after voting that they selected the wrong guy, while the politician almost immediately forgets whoever elected him and hits the sack with other, more interesting “projects”.
Unlike marriage though, at least the electorate has the chance to reject the politician every 5 years.
Now, if only marriage was like that! Many Kenyans would be divorced!
