It seems quite 'Kenyan' to dispute presidential elections. But having a divided electoral commission with a decimal point as one of the bones of contention was unprecedented.
As a scientist who has worked with numbers all my life, the decimal point and percentages left my head spinning.
I taught maths in high school when I was younger and more innocent. I remember teaching girls how to truncate, round off and what are mutually events, later mutually exclusive sets.
It's possible to have two candidates meet the 25 per cent threshold in one county: we vote for one presidential candidate only. The votes of the four presidential candidates are mutually exclusive.
Clearly and without prejudice, there is more than meets the eyes in the divided commission; it's more than decimal points, percentages or opaqueness.
I need to re-read the myth of the Trojan horse. The dispute in elections arises not so much from the numbers but from the high expectations built in. Each side was so confident about winning that they ignored the reality on the ground.
The Azimio side thought that by dancing with the establishment, it was a done deal. They underestimated the power of the hustler-dynasty narrative and never came up with a counter-narrative.
Kenya Kwanza forgot there were votes beyond their strongholds. Or was defending their stronghold a better strategy? Let me state that I prefer the observer status in politics, not the player.
To quote former Uasin Gishu governor and now senator, Jackson Madago, "siweki siasa kwa roho." (I try not to be emotional about politics).
Enough digression. Kenyans want elections behind them as soon as possible. They want to go on with their lives. They have been battered enough by Covid-19, the war in Ukraine and subsequent inflation. Let's add a compressed school year.
That is why a repeat election, if ordered by Supreme Court, would spring surprises. And an absolute winner. I will leave it to you to speculate who would be the winner. But I can give you a hint; where would voter turnout improve?
Kenyans wanted the election to come and go. They want to go back to their jobs, mostly self-employment where a day's loss of earnings can mean hunger.
Informal sector
Anyone stopping them from going back to their lives is an "enemy." It is common knowledge that 80 per cent of Kenyans work in the informal sector, with all the uncertainties.
You may have noted that the polls' effect on the economy has reduced since 2010. Citizens have realised that elections come and go, but the economy remains.
And polls rarely make a significant difference to our economic lives. Those who have lived through all our four presidents can attest to that.
Few shifts from one socio-economic class to the next, despite new presidents. The leading contenders made it appear that with their win, upward mobility will become easier.
One of the most commonly asked questions in Kenya is why we have no money in our pockets despite economic growth. The answer is simple; inequality. Closing the socio-economic gap accentuated by graft should be one of the key tasks of the next regime.
Another explanation is that Kenya has become a service-based economy, everyone is busy but has no real value addition. That is why industrialisation is worth pursuing.
Let me surprise you, a new Boeing 777-9, is priced at $442 million (Sh53 billion), says statica.com. You still want to know why we should industrialise?
Sophisticated citizens can talk of a dent in investment confidence because of an election dispute. But only a tiny minority belong to that class.
The majority of the citizens are at a subsistence level. The sophisticated can talk of postponement of major investment decisions or diversion to other countries. That includes money flowing to our stock exchange.
The realisation that election disputes affect the economy has made the leading political contenders call for peace and legal and constitutional means to resolve the dispute.
Both voters and vote seekers suffer alike. Vote seekers lose credibility from the voters if they let politics override economics. Noted the 211 representatives retired prematurely by voters?
Beyond the new constitution, the evolution of Kenyans into homo-economicus from homo-politicus has moderated the extremity that results from election disputes.
The lack of violence despite the expectations from both sides of the political divide is the best evidence that our country has matured.
We can predict that from now henceforth, economics will remain a central political issue, a determinant of who will win or lose. We are slowly removing emotions from politics, another sign of national maturity.
But a better option to reduce the election disputes is to grow the economy so that more Kenyans become affluent. Noted that the affluent are less emotional about politics?
That is not hard to explain.
The election disputes are not political, they are economic. Few will say that loudly. Winning an election opens national purses to winners.
Remember we have no oil wealth and the State remains the biggest national asset. Slowly and surely, our political disputes are getting economic solutions. The predominance of economics in the campaigns might have been precipitated by suffering because of Covid-19 and the Ukraine war.
But that is likely to become entrenched in the national psyche.
It's a path well-trodden by developed countries and our role models. We are not an exception.
