It would be hard for Kenya to pass the democratic litmus test

When former IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati was whisked away by security officers after chaos erupted between Azimio and UDA leaders at the auditorium, Bomas of Kenya Aug 15, 2022. [Jonah Onyango, Standard]

Since multipartyism, Kenya's democratic ideals have been falling apart successively. So, if WB Yeats were to examine Kenya, he would rewrite his poem, 'The second coming' to read thus, "The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon [Kenya]".

Likewise, if Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, in their 2018 thought-provoking book titled 'How democracy dies: What history tells us about our future' were to analyse Kenya's erratic struggle for democracy since multipartyism, they would dismiss us as a country with a fragile "commitment to the democratic rules of the game". Levitsky and Ziblatt give an account of how the United States tests positive for a sinking democracy-their conclusions are undoubtedly generalisable, and indeed so, in quasi-democracies in the Global South states like Kenya.