Look closely at your current and aspiring leaders ahead of 2027

Wiper Patriotic Front leader Kalonzo Musyoka addresses residents in Kibwezi town on March 31, 2026. [KMPS]

There is an old saying that a fool and his money are soon parted. In Kenya, we might update it: “A people and their votes are soon parted”, and they spend the next five years wondering why healthcare is collapsing, roads are crumbling, and the person they queued for hours to elect hasn't returned their calls since the returning officer read his name.

We are, once again, in the season of political courtship. And like any courtship, it is full of sweet nothings. The problem with sweet nothings is that they are, at their core, vacuous.

James Madison, one of the architects of American democracy, was frank about the kind of creatures that democracy can produce. He called them factious leaders; men whose gift is rabble-rousing, whose talent is promising rather than building, and whose instinct, when cornered, is to kindle a flame of division rather than light the lamp of progress.

In 1787, Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that the great danger to the republican government is not the foreign enemy at the gate, but the demagogue in the drawing room. The political climate in Kenya, 239 years later, remains the same.

Fresh colours

The 2027 General Election is already being pre-positioned with the precision of a military blitzkrieg. Coalitions are being assembled, handshakes are being planned, and some have already been executed. New political vehicles are being fabricated, and old ones are being spray-painted in fresh colours. The message, as always, is; this time will be different. But the messenger is the same. In politics, the messenger is the message.

What should worry Kenyans about 2027 is lack of specifics on critical national issues and the incendiary invective being thrown about with reckless abandon. When a politician tells you he will transform the country, ask him to define ‘transform’. When another says he will fight corruption, ask him why he did not fight it the last time he held office.

When they speak of 'the people', ask which people, because in Kenyan politics, 'the people' has a way of meaning an ethnic community, a financial constituency, or a WhatsApp group of financiers, depending on the occasion.

The Federalist Papers warned that assemblies of men are prone to being seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions. Simply put, a crowd roused by a good orator can be made to vote against its own best interests with a smile on its face. We have seen this movie before. The popcorn gets finished, the screen goes blank, and we are left holding empty promises and emptier wallets.

The inner circles of bad leaders deserve scrutiny. History shows that a leader's advisory bubble, fed on flattery and managed information, can take a nation off a cliff while the leader believes he is still walking on solid ground. The men and women whispering into the ears of our politicians matter as much as the politicians themselves. When that circle is made up exclusively of fundraisers, praise-singers, and political godfathers, the nation's business becomes secondary to the business of the inner circle. 

There is a pattern here that Kenyans keep ignoring because it is easier to be swept up in the excitement of a rally than to sit back and determine what has not been delivered. The problem is not that Kenyan voters are uninformed. Many are. They simply choose to stay uninformed during election season when tribal math gets activated.

The grievances get personalised. The rally becomes a homecoming, and the homecoming becomes a blank cheque. Madison, again, was unsparing; enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. The question for Kenya is who is below deck, and who put them there?

The voter is the referee, the judge, and the last line of defence against politics as a repeat performance in new costumes. Before 2027 fully arrives, check the aspirant's record, not rhetoric. Political character, like a dog's tail, is very hard to straighten. 2027 is an examination. Kenyans have failed before, not for lack of intelligence, but for choosing, at the critical moment, to suspend it.