The writing has squarely been scripted on the wall – and it is clear – that next year’s general election will be of a momentous electoral epoch, and a historical process in Kenya. It all boils down to a decisive contest of insurmountable proportions in waiting, between Kenyans versus the pro two-term proponents, supporting president William Ruto’s reelection bid. It will be an exercise of its own kind – a penultimate one – 2027 General Election.
The process will not be an affair of Kenyan tribes against each other or one, but citizens united with one common goal – to dislodge the ruling Kenya Kwanza administration from power through the ballot box.
Reason? The high cost of living with no morsel on the table for a majority of them, what with the piercing spike in fuel prices and other essential commodities?
Last Thursday, the president was candid and categorical, when he assured Kenyans that if it was the will of God that he gets a second term n office, there was nothing one could do about it.
But he added if it will be his (God’s) wish that the elections be won by anyone else from the opposition, so be it! It would be the will of God, which he said, nobody can change, or do anything about it.
That was the president’s assurance to Kenyans during the national prayer breakfast meeting in Nairobi, in which he said whoever wins the presidency, that will not deter Kenya from moving on forward, and stating that the electoral process would be free, fair and creditable as there would be no cause for alarm for Kenyans not to move on, whomsoever wins.
Already, the National Assembly has approved and allocated a whopping Sh74.8 billion to ensure that the electoral body, IEBC, conducts the elections above board by putting its house in order.
The onus now lies within the armpit of the electoral body to execute its mandate, unlike before when it was got dumfounded – to ward off threats of gloom, and saddening incidents of its own past regimes that was compromised to steal the thunder from the spotlight in the counting rooms of the ballot boxes and rig previous elections.
This is why the 2027 election cycle promises to ignite all sparks of an explosive contest – the proponents of the two-term campaigning for president Ruto’s reelection against the United Opposition’s one term push notwithstanding.
Unlike the 2007 elections when a united opposition dislodged Kanu’s 40 years of reign at the helm of the country’s highest political seat under the slogan – Forty-one versus one – next year’s election circuit will be a defining moment for the ruling Kenya Kwanza’s drive to hang onto power.
The general mood is ear-piercing, and the ruling political class is undergoing trying moments in selling the Kenya Kwanza agenda for reelection.
The tempo was reignited last week when outspoken MP, Didmus Barasa, was shown dust in his own Bungoma backyard, when a towering man walked forward and held the MP by the neck, snatched the microphone from him and told him to sit down.
This happened when Barasa started the two-term mantra at a gathering to hype support for president Ruto’s reelection.
But no sooner had that episode evaporated from the minds of Kenyans, that came the turn for the speaker of the national assembly, and Ford Kenya leader, Moses Wetang’ula.
Wetang’ula was too booed and shouted down in Bungoma when he tried to sell the Kenya Kwanza two-term chorus.
Whereas the national speaker has adamantly declined to fold his own Ford-Kenya party so that he can join United Democratic Alliance (UDA of president Ruto in one fold, and a joint push for the two-term campaign, is indeed a herculean task ahead for the speaker and prime cabinet secretary for Foreign Affairs and Diaspora CS, Musalia Mudavadi. It will be a mountainous climb with cataracts on the way in the voter – rich Western Kenya of the Mulembe Nation..
