Voting is unlikely to be based on political party manifestos but tribes

In Kenya, it is in order to look at political party manifestos with jaundiced eyes. We have heard consecutive generations of politicians promise heaven but deliver little. We are not supposed to hold them to account. We don’t even think we should hold them to account. There are throngs of politically correct tribal pseudo-scholars and ideologues, painting failed regimes in glowing colours and praising non-existent achievements.

At the end of the season, therefore, the regime will bombard you with fresh promises, totally ignoring failed promises. They will unleash mind-boggling statistics of imaginary accomplishments. Hence President Uhuru Kenyatta will swiftly move from his government having constructed 10,000km of tarmac roads two years ago to 1,900km this year. Nobody questions this shift. The President will play down the food crisis in the country. He may only address it in a footnote, in a choreographed two-minute question and answer session. The 100-day doctors strike is swept under the rug. Not a word is said on the ongoing nurses strike and none at all on incessant troubles with teachers. International relations paint Kenya as the darling of the world. Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed will know how Africa rejected her in Addis Ababa a few months ago. But she will tell us we are the darlings of Africa and the world.

Away from flummery, the Jubilee manifesto is rich in programmatic and macro economic focus. It is a good action-based promise about building structures and physical edifices. They will build a dual carriageway from Nairobi to Mombasa and a new factory in each of the 47 counties. They will bring water to every household in Nairobi and in neighbouring counties. They will build houses, markets, sewerages, stadiums and the lot. This manifesto could, nonetheless, have done well with some underpinning philosophical focus on the people. What nation are they building, if they are building one? Did they miss a perfect ideological moment to correct their “We eat as you salivate” portrait?

This is where the NASA manifesto has an edge over Jubilee’s. NASA’s is largely an ideological and policy framework platform. Perhaps because they are in power, Jubilee leaders have not found it necessary to have an ideological and philosophical footing? Projects such as they propose are certainly good. Yet meaningful projects and programmes require a solid social and philosophical focus on the people – the nation. For, the biggest challenge in Kenya today is not the absence of physical structures and sundry cement and mortar edifices.

Our biggest problem is the challenge of nationhood. Making us Kenyans is the foremost job for future governments. Past regimes have made us a collection of mutually suspicious and hostile tribes. Our ethnic driven fears and hostilities get to their climax during elections. We even fear going to elections. Yet we lack the courage to face what makes us afraid. It is not in the interest of our leaders to do so. You will not, therefore, see this in their manifestos.

What then is the worth of these manifestos? It is known that Kenyans do not vote because of political party manifestos. They vote for their tribal leaders. This defect expressed itself loudest during the 2005 national constitutional referendum. The joke of it was that there was no need to read the draft constitution, or to be educated on it. President Kibaki and ODM leader Raila Odinga had read the thing. If Raila said it was bad, then it was bad. Conversely, if President Kibaki said it was good, it was. What mattered was your tribe.

Within this context, even before the two manifestos were launched, the tribal followers already knew their leaders’ manifestos were perfect. While we have some 19 million registered voters out there, I suspect that less than ten thousand Kenyans will study the two manifestos from cover to cover. And even among these, voting is unlikely to be based on the manifestos. Not even the educated class has time for manifestos. They vote with their tribes, like everybody else. Where they do not do so, it is because they have fallen out with the tribal leader for some other reasons. Even before they see the manifesto, therefore, they already know they will not vote for him.

What then, we may ask, is the role of the manifesto and the commotion that accompanies its public presentation? How do we justify the hundreds of millions spent on this thing? We may wish to push this question further and ask, what indeed is the use of this thing if it does not bind the leaders to anything? One noteworthy promise in both manifestos is free education in primary and secondary schools. The matter of free education goes back to the Kanu Manifesto of 1963. It came up again in the Ominde Commission Report of 1964 – 65. Yet it did not take off.

In December 1973 President Jomo Kenyatta renewed the promise of free education in the first four years of primary school, beginning the following year. It never came to pass. President Moi reintroduced this when he came to power in 1978. Once again, it fell through. The closest we came to realising universal primary education was in the first two years of the Narc Government in 2003 and 2004. Corruption cartels in Jogoo House, however, derailed the process and subjected it to a slow and painful death. It is doubtful that it will work this time. Even in the unlikely event that it worked, it would still not be free, for we would have to tax ourselves mercilessly to realise this. In the end, both the manifesto and those who own it can only be as good as the people want them to be. Provided that Kenyans still worship and vote in empty tribal shrines, nothing good will come out of their leaders and manifestos.

- Mr Muluka is a publishing editor, special consultant and advisor on public and media relations [email protected]