Ideas, not cash handouts, should influence our voting

Hundreds of Kenyans line up to vote in 2005 [Courtesy]

In a republic, the people are understood to be units of independent judgment capable of making decisions on the basis of freely available information. In current times, the politics of wealth and dishing out money to crowds have, however, subverted the sacrosanct credos of our democracy and rendered it bankrupt of ideas.