We Voted For The Life We Complain About Every Day
Sadly, a country with so much promise can become a place where the ordinary citizen has learnt to survive by lowering expectations. Sadly, we have become so used to broken hospitals that during campaigns a piece of meat can be made to feel like development. It is sad that working schools, properly paid teachers and safe classrooms can be pushed aside by a sack of cabbage placed before a desperate parent. Sadly, roads, bridges, drainage and public transport can be exchanged for fifty shillings pressed into the palm of a voter who has been made poor by the same politics he is being asked to reward.
Sadly, security can be reduced to a reflector jacket. It is sad that a real manufacturing sector, the kind that gives young people careers, skills, salaries, dignity and pensions, can be replaced by campaign aprons, branded hats and temporary cheering squads. It is sad that a working Judiciary, which should be the last shield of the poor against the powerful, can be mocked by an M-Pesa message sent during election season. But the saddest part is not that politicians do this. The saddest part is that we allow it, normalize it, defend it, laugh about it and then complain for five years when the consequences arrive at our doors.
Kenya’s tragedy is no longer simply bad leadership. It is a voter crisis. It is a national character crisis. It is a crisis of memory, self-respect and civic discipline. The political class has studied us with frightening accuracy. They have learnt that our pain can be purchased cheaply. They have learnt that hunger can silence principle. They have learnt that a voter who has suffered for years can be made to forget those years with one plate of food, one small note, one promise whispered in a funeral, one branded T-shirt, one staged act of generosity or one public relations stunt made to look like compassion. They have learnt that many Kenyans do not punish failure; they recycle it.
This is why the blame must finally return to where it is most uncomfortable: at our feet as voters. Not because politicians are innocent. They are not. Many of them are opportunistic, shameless and highly skilled at manipulating poverty. But opportunity only becomes power where there is permission. A politician can offer meat, but a voter decides whether meat is worth a hospital. A politician can offer cabbage, but a parent decides whether cabbage is worth a school. A politician can offer fifty shillings, but a citizen decides whether fifty shillings is worth five years of potholes, darkness, hunger, unemployment and humiliation. The political class is not powerful because it is brilliant. It is powerful because it has come to understand our weaknesses and has built an industry around them.
We must be honest about what happens during elections. Campaign season in Kenya often becomes a marketplace where citizens auction their own suffering. The voter who has no medicine in the dispensary takes a small handout from the person who helped create the scarcity. The youth with no job wears a campaign shirt for the leader whose policies destroyed enterprise. The parent whose child sits in an overcrowded classroom celebrates a politician who arrives with a few exercise books instead of demanding a functioning education system. The trader crushed by taxes cheers the same people who pass and defend those taxes. The boda boda rider harassed by chaotic enforcement becomes a mobilizer for the people who refuse to create order. The farmer who cannot access fair markets dances for the same system that has kept agriculture poor and political.
This is how a nation slowly participates in its own punishment. We keep mistaking temporary relief for leadership. We keep mistaking charity for public service. We keep mistaking visibility for competence. We keep mistaking noise for courage. We keep mistaking handouts for policy. We keep mistaking tribal loyalty for wisdom. We keep mistaking proximity to power for progress. Then, when hospitals fail, when schools collapse, when security disappears, when courts delay justice, when taxes rise, when businesses die and when young people leave the country in frustration, we act surprised. We should not be surprised. We signed the contract. We may not have read it, but we signed it with our votes, our silence, our excuses and our willingness to be bought.
The political class has perfected the art of reducing national development into personal favours. A road that should be built because taxes were paid is presented as a personal gift from a leader. A bursary that should be transparent and rights-based is turned into a loyalty tool. A hospital project becomes a campaign prop. A water connection becomes a favour. A job opportunity becomes a reward for political obedience. A school renovation becomes a photo opportunity. A funeral contribution becomes political capital. Slowly, citizens stop seeing government as an institution funded by their sweat and begin seeing leaders as owners of public resources. That mental slavery is one of the biggest reasons our quality of life remains poor.
A citizen who understands taxation does not clap for a leader who gives back crumbs. A citizen who understands public finance does not kneel before a politician for a project paid for by public money. A citizen who understands democracy does not treat an elected official like a king. A citizen who understands rights does not beg for services. But a citizen who has been deliberately kept desperate becomes easy to control. Poverty is not only an economic condition; it is also a political weapon. When people are hungry, they are easier to divide. When they are unemployed, they are easier to mobilize. When schools are weak, propaganda travels faster. When institutions are compromised, fear grows. When citizens lose hope, they begin to sell tomorrow for today.
That is why the small things we accept during campaigns are never small. A packet of unga is not just a packet of unga when it is used to buy silence. A meat feast is not just meat when it replaces a conversation about hospitals. A reflector jacket is not just a jacket when it replaces a debate about national security and public order. An apron or cap is not just campaign merchandise when it substitutes serious thinking about factories, productivity and jobs. An M-Pesa message is not just money when it buys forgiveness for injustice, corruption or incompetence. These things may look harmless, but in the hands of political opportunists they become instruments of mass surrender.
The result is the bad quality of life we complain about every day. We complain about hospitals without medicine, but we vote for leaders who campaign with spectacle instead of health plans. We complain about schools without enough teachers, but we celebrate leaders who use bursaries as loyalty traps. We complain about roads that destroy vehicles and waste time, but we sell our vote to the loudest convoy. We complain about insecurity, but we support politics that rewards chaos and hooliganism. We complain about unemployment, but we vote for leaders who have no credible plan for manufacturing, enterprise, skills or markets. We complain about injustice, but we allow courts, police, prosecutors and oversight institutions to be captured by political interests. We complain about corruption, but we praise thieves when they share a little of wha