To change our leaders, we must change why we vote

It is the great Austrian-American educator Peter Drucker who said that, “leadership is lifting a person’s vision to high sights, the raising of a person’s performance to a higher standard, the building of a personality beyond its normal limitations”.

True leadership is a divine calling, one that has its foundation on service to make the lives of others better. It is an inward drive that permeates one’s drive, belief and comes out through one’s action.

As harsh as it may sound, In our country today we suffer from an acute shortage of good leaders. Those that are selfless and genuinely seek to improve the livelihoods of those they are leading.

As we head to the general elections later this year we must seriously consider what kind of lives we want as Kenyans. What kind of life do we want for our children for the next five years. Such deep introspection will help pick certain leaders and leave out others.

We need to interrogate the leaders beyond the hullabaloo and razzmatazz and campaign excitement. Let us look beyond the party slogans and political rhetoric to the kind of person they really are.

Most of these aspirants are not strangers to us. They have been with us, we know the kind of people they are, their value system and what they are capable of doing.

Right from the ward level, all the way up to the President, we can make decisions that will be a pain for the next five years or that will give us joy and satisfaction. Lets us look for men and women who will work tirelessly to ensure the future generations have a better place.

Mark Andrew Skousen, an American economist and writer was spot on when he said, We shall never change our political leaders until we change the people who elect them. This is why I continue pleading with our youth to register as a voter and make the change they want to see.

It is shocking that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission missed its target by a huge margin in the exercise that ended last week. Young eligible voters who were the target of the drive must not lose hope in the country’s leadership.

This is what consistent poor choices of leaders do, they lead to voter apathy. But this August we have a chance to make things right. Let us make a change.