Why we keep falling for empty election promises

Proposed architectural design of the Machakos Formula 1. [Photo, File]

There’s a hilarious short video doing the rounds touching on false promises made by our politicians while looking for votes, and, in this particular instance, even after the culprit had landed the high office. 

The video goes back to Mwai Kibaki presidency days and zooms in on one Governor who made fantastic (in the real meaning of the word) promises on what he would deliver during his tenure.

He went so far as to get a couple of futuristic images of how the county would look in a couple of years. Dubai and Singapore would not hold a candle to Machakos City.

Delegations would have been sent over from developed countries to locate and seize the blueprint for this city that somehow emerged in a decade or so from ruins of poverty, more like the proverbial sphinx. The Governor, in his state of delirium, had even envisaged a Formula 1 track in the county, one that would apparently be used for day-to-day traffic when the track is not hosting Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.

It looked realistic until it wasn’t. Yet what the people of Machakos really wanted was just plain old water. Not skyscrapers; not a Governor’s mansion to rival the White House and certainly not a Formula 1 track.

Plain old water. And perhaps a hospital that works so that when a child is sick, the parent is assured of availability of basic medicine and a doctor. 

Why do we get our priorities so wrong? Is it a disease that is prevalent among Africans? Recently, during the by-elections, at least a billion shillings must have been dished out to people so that they can be persuaded to vote one way instead of the other. By the time 2027 is knocking, the money poured will be astronomical, but it will have no lasting impact on the electorate. Most will just drink it away. It is inflationary money, period. 

We need visionary leaders who will leave a legacy, something the future generation will look back on and say: “our fathers and forefathers had the wherewithal to see beyond their noses and that’s why we are where we are.” 

But we also need voters who demand accountability from the leaders. They should be asking the right questions to the leaders. Even simple questions such as: “what happened to the rice and beans you gave us when you needed our votes? How come you no longer give us those goodies that were common during campaigns?

How come we don’t see the choppers that used to crisscross the skies when you were hunting for votes?” And at the end of the term, they should ask what happened to all those promises of hospitals, schools, water etc that politicians invariably make when hunting for votes. 

A good example happened recently: there are some fellows given motorbikes to kickstart their lives. I would love to know how many are still out there. And if they are, do they have ownership of the same? Or have they disposed of them and gone back to their bad old days of imbibing cheap alcohol with the money from the sale of the bikes? Just asking. 

What can you do with a billion shillings, the amount being bandied about as having been spent on two by-elections? One, you can rehabilitate not less than 100 schools in those constituencies that badly needs it.

You can build at least 1,000 new classrooms. You can provide water to thousands of people and pay doctors and nurses. This money can have a long lasting impact on the people but we would rather spend it in frivolities and pork barrel politics that have no impact on the livelihoods of people. 

All this reinforces my long held belief that the therapy for politicians is to tell a lie on top of another: it makes them feel good that they can get away with bare faced lies.

-The writer is a communications consultant