Yes, Kenya deserves a competitive 2027 presidential contest

The few opinion polls that I have seen over the last year show President William Ruto struggling to get above 30 per cent of the vote share. His approval rating is also decidedly below water.

In the same polls more than two-thirds of Kenyans, with majorities in all major political zones (including Ruto’s presumed back yard), saying the country is headed in the wrong direction. With these figures, you would expect Ruto’s political fate was sealed.

However, that is not the case. The President can still coast to re-election next year. His biggest advantage is he is the incumbent. This has been demonstrated in recent by-elections in which the state has allegedly spared no resources to get the President’s preferred candidate over the line. We should expect the same in next year’s election.

The other big advantage is the disorganisation among the opposition. We seem to be sleepwalking towards a rerun of either the 1992 or 1997 elections. In both elections, the combined votes of the opposition would have easily trounced the incumbent. However, the leading opposition figures refused to reign in their egos.

All looked at the incumbent’s numbers and imagined they could win. The same delusion appears to be at play in this election among opposition leaders. And if they follow through, they will likely lose to President Ruto.

An abiding problem among opposition leaders is lack of trust and failure to articulate a clear agenda. There are those among them who think the solution to the low-trust problem is to split votes and force a run-off as a way of revealing the respective strengths of opposition leaders for bargaining purposes. This is doomed to fail for two reasons.

A divided opposition will ensure the 2027 election becomes an ethnic census affair, an outcome that will enormously advantage the incumbent. He has the resources to buy off as many ethnic chiefs as he needs.

Second, turnout will be key in case of a run-off. And I doubt the opposition will have means to engineer enough turnout. They will likely be out of cash; and the President will be out aggressively courting elected opposition leaders.

Messaging will also shape the outcome. It will not be enough to remind voters that the President is unpopular or has failed in one area or another. Voters will also want to know the path forward. People will need inspiration.

However, the current opposition formation lacks an inspiring message. They are mostly trafficking in grievance politics and ethnic mobilisation, which plays right into the hands of the incumbent’s likely strategy of cynical mobilisation on the basis of identity and patronage. Again, this will likely fail.

All this to say the only way to ensure a competitive presidential election in 2027 is if the opposition can present a unity candidate. That candidate should be able to offer sharp contrasts against the incumbent on the issues.

And while victory will not be guaranteed (remember, incumbency advantage is real), it will ensure the country gets to deliberate on the way forward before choosing who will govern in the following five years. The last thing we need as a country is the mindless cynicism of an ethnic census election.

-The writer is a professor at Georgetown University