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A dreamy mythology is quickly building around the youth vote and how it could be deployed to revolutionary effect in 2027. Voters disappointed by the leaders they elected in 2022 are already working themselves up into a frenzy that can only bring equal chagrin come 2027.

Not that the numbers being thrown around aren’t impressive. They are. I’ve seen 14 million being bandied about. That’d cause a tremor, especially if even a half of these votes go to a single candidate of the young people’s fancy.

A stubby justice activist with a funny name has been mentioned. And therein lies the first problem. Yes, the senator has name recognition. He might even be called a national figure. No one doubts that he cares deeply about the issues he litigates about. And he seems to enjoy sticking it to bureaucrats and other hated characters in the establishment.

But does that make him the appropriate leader for the times? Some young people think so, given the options before voters in previous elections and the names they are likely to face in 2027. If he chooses to run, we’ll see the set of programmes he presents to the electorate. What we can safely say at this point is that activism alone, and even resonant activism, doesn’t a president make.

And speaking of those ballot options – the senator will have to contend with a line of elderly men of the establishment who feel entitled to the presidency, either because of the accident of being born into a prominent political family or because they are career politicians who feel they measure up to the big bed at the State House.

Let’s be clear, a campaign for any political office in Kenya is an expensive undertaking. Big money is needed for advertising, publicity materials, renting venues, hiring personnel to make and answer phone calls, transportation, and those inevitable charitable donations at campaign stops.

Forget running for a Senate seat (the cost of which a 2022 study put at about Sh40 million). A presidential campaign is even more prohibitively costly. In 2022, someone who should know his numbers well estimated that it cost more than Sh4 billion to become President in Kenya. That expense alone would keep out most everyone except the wealthiest who have the backing of a moneyed political party with national reach.

Needless to say, youth adoration alone cannot raise that kind of money for what would amount to a fringe candidacy riding on name recognition that arose from court activism that had notable wins here and there.

Another problem with pinning hopes on the youth vote is, of course, that young people are not an inflexible bloc that can be bought wholesale. Geezers like me were impressed by the organising prowess that helped pour Gen Z protesters onto the streets in June and July to express their rejection of tax proposals in a finance bill.

But some of us weren’t taken in by the protesters’ seductive claims that they were “tribe-less”. Just like their parents, young Kenyans are swayed by ethnic loyalty, whose pull is difficult to resist.

And we were vindicated a few months later when a man who studied literature at university, became a provincial administrator and then an MP and later had the great luck of being elected Deputy President was impeached and removed from office.

Among the first people to claim betrayal and to pledge revenge come 2027 were the young from the impeached politician’s home region. Many claimed that their ethnic group was under attack.

The mountain’s young people will get free rides to polling stations in 2027 to avenge the 2024 great betrayal as their peers in other regions search for familiar names on ballot papers. Who will be elected? The usual suspects – the very same types of politicians that we seethe about every day. And then the ritual of whining about our polling booth choices will start all over again.

— The writer is a Sub-Editor with People Daily-