Democracy is not just about winning and losing elections

Politics should never be violent. Indeed, politics should be about governance, about managing an economy and a complex democratic and bureaucratic system for the best of the people. It should be about service. However, in Kenya, politics has become purely about power. And power is not always a bad thing. In fact, democratic systems were created to give power to the people. And devolved power was supposed to be just that; empowering. Slicing up the political cake was intended to fairly diffuse tensions (and budgets!) while generating natural efficiencies at local levels. 

However, the Kenyan system for too long has done quite the opposite. Instead of a fair distribution of political power, the current political system has led to a dangerous game of zero-sum politics. In-game theory – and basic economic theory – a zero-sum game is a simple mathematical representation of a situation. In this situation, there is one winner and one loser. One total winner. And one total loser. In this system, each participant’s gain or loss is exactly balanced by the losses or gains of the other participant.