Dear voter,

Today, I am going personal with you. Not to influence or lobby you on how you should vote on Thursday, for I hold brief for no one. But to engage you in a conversation on how we can collectively make, not necessarily the right choice for that can be illusionary, but a good choice nonetheless.

On Thursday, 14.2 million of us will troop to the nearest polling stations to make an epoch defining decision that will remain in currency for five years and shape the destiny of this country. We will elect a president, Members of Parliament and councillors.

We will make decisions that we will be proud of, regret for sometime.

The decision we will make cannot be recalled no matter the level of meditation or self-introspection later in life. The events you will witness in the next five years will be due to the way you vote.

That act of casting your vote will trigger a chain of events, and you will bear full responsibility for it.

As for president, the rational choice is between two candidates President Kibaki and Mr Raila Odinga.

Any voter who, in exercise of his constitutional right, votes for a fringe candidate will have denied himself the right to elect the fourth president, and that is tragic, but a constitutional right nonetheless.

Two basic reasons underline my submission.

First, no other candidate apart from Kibaki and Raila has any chance of winning the presidency.

Second, the threat of a miracle mesmerising or blinding us to vote for a certain fringe candidate seems to have disappeared.

Kibaki could probably come through, but is facing a real challenge with the distinct possibility of an ignominious rejection.

For an incumbent to be belabouring for re-election in Africa despite his track record, the enormous resources at his disposal, and the levers of power waiting to be pulled shows either of two things. First, it underscores probably some intrinsic political weakness of the incumbent either in his political philosophy or could even be a manifestation of a rare attribute of the African president.

Kibaki has never been the typical African leader who does anything to stay or perpetuate his power.

The other is the enormous political strength of the challenger. No opposition leader has been better equipped and prepared than Raila is to be elected president.

The choice between Raila and Kibaki is fascinating. For one, the candidature of Kibaki is an attractive one. He has done well on the economy.

His government has liberalised the political space. He undertook a radical surgery of the Judiciary.

His government is close to a minimalist government or what political theorists call the night watchmen theory of government that gives the individual enough autonomy on most spheres of operations. His government has empowered some in rural Kenya.

But Kibaki has his fair share of failures. The word "reform" is an anathema to him. Fighting corruption is not even a low priority in his scale of things and tribalism as practised by a cabal of influential individuals close to him has blemished his record.

Raila, on the other hand, despite the scare of wars fought gallantly in the trenches of opposition politics, is untested in presidential terms. He makes attractive promises. His economic policy and its finer details do not sound innovative. Forget about him fighting corruption. But in the event that he wins, he can be trusted to engineer the most radical reconfiguration of the country.

We will have a more ethnically inclusive country, and fair redistribution of resources. Neglected communities and regions will get a new lease of life under Raila. Strong social programmes will probably be undertaken. Historic grievances and human rights issues like the Wagalla Massacre will be resolved. He will be a strong president, probably evolving into the big man syndrome of the African leader.

Raila and Kibaki are attractive in different ways. They have their strengths and weaknesses.

They are the best candidates the rationale voter can choose and each has a distinct and attractive blue print. The choice is between the status quo for Kibaki, who is persuading us that the best of presidency lies in what he will do in the next five years and Raila who quotes former US President Ronald Reagan’s words: "You haven’t seen anything yet!"

When America was in the grip of civil war, Abraham Lincoln in 1858 delivered his famous "divided house" speech on slavery. He decried two major issues that afflicted the American body politic, "the failure of leadership and the smallness of American politics".

Since independence, Kenya has had a problem of political leadership and is shackled by the smallness of its politics.

The smallness of the Kenyan politics is the irrational loyalty and religious adherence to ethnicity. The Kenyan voter has refused to set himself free from the chains of his ethnic warlord and that defines the country. This is your chance to break the chains. Take it!

Source: The Standard 

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