The trend we have seen recently of non-politicians announcing their interest in the presidency is a sure sign that the field is going to be pretty crowded this time round. And it seems that most of the numbers will be made up of non-politicians and "nobodies."
Already it is clear that this has been received with lot of anger in most quarters. One reader left a comment in this blog saying; has the presidency now become for anybody?
I found that a rather strange statement but in a way it is not surprising because Kenyans have been convinced that the presidency is only for a few. Persons who stand for the presidency are supposed to be political giants, preferably very rich people. Anybody else who stands, it seems, will cause plenty of anger and who-do-they-think-they-are animosity from the public.
Kenyans will need to make up their minds about this issue because everybody agrees that we badly need a change of direction in the leadership of the country. This will obviously not come from the current political class who have blackmailed the country for too long now. It can only come from a new generation of leaders who have never been in politics before but who have the will to bring about the genuine change Kenyans want.
After the Watergate scandal of the early 70s that saw the resignation of President Richard Nixon, Americans voted in an outsider in President Jimmy Carter, a strong Baptist who confessed that he was a born again Christian. The message was clear, the nation was tired of dirty politics and the public badly wanted a clean up.
In Kenya, the nation is slowly being suffocated to death by corruption and we need a new beginning. To achieve that, we need to understand that only an outsider can have a fighting chance of getting the job done.
Can Kenya rise to be the sort of country where anybody can rise to be president irrespective of their tribe or family background as long as they can add value and bring badly required integrity to the office?
Over to you the Kenyan voters.
Search engines can give you huge traffic. Here's how a Kenyan company can get thousands of visitors to their site daily.
I think that any Kenyan who meets the vying criteria can vie for the post. but of course you have something to offer Kenyans an manage to fund a campaign. So you have to be very rich I guess and this means you can only be in the 10% lot who actually control Kenyan wealth. Money in Kenya is what has resulted in somebodys and 'nobodies'politically speaking. And by the way, although this article is well written, it is not Jimmy Carter who succeeded Nixon but Gerald R. Ford. He later pardoned Nixon from prosecution over the Watergate scandal and was therefore credited with 'healing the nation' at a difficult time when it was too polarized.
ReplyDeleteThanx for reading Liz.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry that my post was not clear although I have read it carefully and I do not see anywhere where I said that Carter was the President who followed Nixon. We all know that Ford was the transitional president who took over after Nixon's resignation as per the American consitution.
What I meant to say was that in the presidential elections that followed in 1976, the American voter was in just the right mood to vote in an "outsider" which Carter was, as well as confessing to being a born again Christian.
-Kumekucha-