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Recently one of the national TV stations did one of the most insightful pieces on the nature of our political campaigns.  Political formations pay too much attention to pulling crowds and leverage of their social media warriors to go viral, with images from the campaign trails.

The objective is to capture the imaginations of voters, create a wave and ride on the attendant bandwagon effect.  The bandwagon can potentially sway the undecided towards a formation that frames its campaigns as though it is the winning side.

Granted, there is a good number of undecided voters who have a higher proclivity to go with the side perceived to be winning. Recent opinion polls buttress the reality that a significant percentage of voters are still undecided in most parts of the country including the populous Mt Kenya region and one would understand the posturing on the social media pages, with vintage shots of political rallies and the need to get them go viral. 

But the bubble has been busted and for those who didn’t know, now they know and from the very words of the politicians who pay Kenyans to crowd these rallies. Nonetheless, one would then expect that these political rallies are overdosed with substantive political agenda from their manifesto. I mean, it is needless to pay a crowd and instead of speaking to them, you attack other politicians at worst or sloganeer at best.

The two major political coalitions in the run up to the August 9th elections would do well to address issues and as the citizenry, it is about time we got value for attending these rallies. Not just the physical crowd but the audience watching these rallies on TV or on social media live streaming. 

Other than Raila Odinga and probably Mishi Mboko who has her ways with words and almost always infuses a great deal of the Azimio la Umoja ten-point agenda items, there is nothing much we get from other perennial speakers in these rallies.

The Kenya Kwanza side would also do well if they stopped their unwarranted attacks on personalities.

Kenyans need to see what distinguishes the political formations and their public rallies need to be platforms for illuminating their agenda for this country.

The good news is that at the county level, there is a positive side to these two major political formations. In Kenya Kwanza, for instance, there are many parties fronting candidates at different levels. This is good for democracy and the contest is even interesting and likely to be a lot more engaging because you have senior politicians supporting Deputy President (DP)William Ruto as the president, but contesting against each other at the gubernatorial level.

The import of this is that at the county level,we are poised to listen to contending ideas on how these candidates are planning to change lives.

How they will distribute, allocate resources and address the plight of the common folks in different counties.

In Kiambu for instance, within Kenya Kwanza as it is now, there is William Kabogo, Moses Kuria and Patrick Kimani Wainaina aka Jungle all on different political parties but supporting the DP. This is a triad of choices that offers the folks in Kiambu a divergence of leadership traditions to interrogate and choose the best.

Coming 10 years since the advent of devolved governments, the citizenry is now a lot more informed and one hopes that we will use the experience we have had with electing governors, based on party popularity to go for substance regardless of party. That’s a lot more straightforward now with parties aligned to either the DP coalition or the Uhuru, Raila, Kalonzo triumvirate. 

As a believer of devolution,the gubernatorial race contest should be critical to us just like the presidential race.