By-elections lay bare troubling signals ahead of 2027 polls

UDA candidates David Ndakwa and Leonard Wamuthende won the Malava and Mbeere North parliamentary seats respectively. [Courtesy, Standard]

Seth Panyako of Malava wept. He broke down and wailed frantically at a police station, in the forenoon of voting day, in the constituency where he had been billed the foremost runner. Voting had only begun, yet Panyako howled because, he said, someone wanted to take his life; and that the vote had already been stolen.

Elsewhere, in Nyanza, Homa Bay Town MP, Peter Kaluma, addressed the media in a blood-drenched shirt that he refrained from changing all day long. He was the victim of electoral violence, right in the polling centre where he was an accredited agent. Someone violently opened up his head with a stone or some other crude object. The lessons are stark. Kaluma is a systems man, a State siren. Where was his security detail?