Why Kenya's presidential debate is a fallacy

On Tuesday, May the 9th the Presidential Debate Steering Committee in conjunction with top journalists and executives drawn from nearly all media houses in the country announced the schedule for the presidential debate.

Speaking to the press, Mr. Wachira Waruru, a key decision maker at Royal Media Services said that they intend to cultivate a culture of civilized discourse in the country’s politics. I think he is either mistaken or he is fooling Kenyans.

The way to bring sanity into our politics is not through an event dubbed The Presidential Debate; it is through a well-organised process driven by among other players, the media. The process begins with issue-based reporting and newsroom panel discussions long before political temperatures reach fever pitch. This way, ethnic-based politics will be tuned out of the minds of Kenyans.

 
We are being dishonest with ourselves by pretending to host a televised debate that gives presidential aspirants a platform to communicate competing visions for our country when all along we have centered our political discussions on ethnicity.

 I am vehemently opposed to this debate because it gives a false impression of our maturity as a nation when we clearly know that we have a long way to go. Please let us not fool ourselves; these window dressing activities don’t look good on us.

To a major extent, the media has always portrayed ethnicity as the main deciding factor in the elections and therefore this event is simply a waste of time. Since independence, our politics has been ethnic-based, something widely believed to be the reason for our failure as a country.

 While everyone silently acknowledges that we need to engage in issue-based politics in order for our society to progress, not much effort is being put towards making that a reality. The fact that this conversation is not even going on in our media houses is disheartening, to say the least.

A good example that illustrates this unfortunate situation we are witnessing is the ethnic-based news reporting that we were treated to early this year during and after the mass voter registration. The media crunched the numbers and presented to the public a comprehensive breakdown based on ethnicity.

The main theme that dominated political panel discussions during prime time news bulletins was the implication of these numbers on the country’s two main coalitions. All these go a long way towards setting the agenda for the country and conditioning people’s minds to think and approach politics from a tribal angle. The Kenyan media stands accused of perpetuating the culture of ethnic-based politics.

These are some of the reasons to believe that our media does not quite understand its role, especially in the electioneering process. I am well aware of the fact that our politics is largely based on ethnicity but the media is only making matters worse by magnifying the problem.

If ethnic voices are increasingly given media blackout, then ethnicity as a factor in our elections will become secondary or even totally inconsequential. It is our collective responsibility to steer the political discourse away from ethnicity. Anything else is a fallacy.