It’s almost that time of year again, when the air is thick with dust from large vehicles, when religious services are transformed into political rallies, and when funerals are compelled to become political rallies. We aren’t afraid to be bitten again, even though we have already been bitten once. Peace has been preached for a long time, and we have attempted to fully heal the nation from the scars and anguish of previous elections, yet we continue to conduct things the same way we did in 2007/2008, and we continue to misunderstand politics as a healthy leadership competition. We continue to regard it as an ethical issue, a regional power struggle, and we continue to let politicians acting in the name of leaders divide and conquer us, poisoning our spirits and blinding us with fear.
They don’t teach us what is good; instead, they show us how others are terrible and make them appear nice. They dismiss us, making us feel unimportant, so that when they do anything tiny for us, it appears to be a huge deal. They will pay our children’s fees, buy us food, and give us free money only to buy the most essential item we have as citizens. Enough blaming the politicians, aren’t we the issue as well? We admire their bravery in sucking up to us because they know we are the only ones who can vote them in or out. We are to fault for allowing them to treat us as if we were bridges that they could use to go where they wanted to go. We are the issue because we allowed them to place us in a situation where we risk it
all.
It’s past time we judged and saw them for what they truly are, and voted them in and out based on the good in their hearts rather than the amount of money in their pockets. We shouldn’t see them as members of our tribe, region, or ethnic groups; instead, we should see them as people who have the
potential to ruin our lives if we vote for them blindly. We have educated our children a lot about peace, sung songs, wrote poetry, and made a lot of art to highlight peace, but now when we don’t have employment, food, or housing due to the Coronavirus, let us not let them feed us for a month and vote
for them blindly. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the past.
By Margaret Waithera.