Protesters march along the Moi Avenue in Mombasa on June 25, 2025.
Kenyan politics has for long been a marketplace of crooks, a grand play where money, not merit, decides who commands the spotlight.
Elections here have not been about ideas, integrity, or the will of the people.
They’ve been billion-shilling auctions. Whoever had the deepest pockets — whether from stolen tenders, inflated contracts, or foreign financiers — wrote the script, hired the extras, and rolled out the most dazzling illusion.
The rest of us were forced into the audience, choking on the smoke while they toast backstage.
You’ve seen it. Convoys of fuel-guzzling SUVs cutting through dusty roads, helicopters buzzing overhead like colonial overlords returning for inspection.
T-shirts tossed at hungry crowds, bags of maize flour stamped with smiling faces, “transport refunds” slipped like bribes.
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission pretends to set spending caps, but everyone knows the truth: it’s all one big play.
The real entry fee to politics is so steep that no honest Kenyan can ever dream of affording it.
Without stolen billions or shadowy investors, your campaign will die in silence, drowned out by the crooks who buy every headline, every crowd, every cheer.
That’s why the good ones have never stood a chance. If you tried holding a town hall with your own hard-earned savings, ten people would come.
The media would barely have covered it. Your manifesto would gather dust while a rival fills stadiums with rented bodies chanting slogans they didn’t even believe in. Crooks excel at optics because optics are cheap.
They’ll announce a road project that never gets built, cut ribbons on empty shells of hospitals, and shed tears at funerals caused by their own greed.
They knew that theatrics mattered more than delivery in a system built on short memories and long pockets.
William Ruto’s Mt Kenya “development tour” in April this year was the clearest example yet. A five-day parade across six counties, complete with helicopters, endless convoys, and staged launches of projects we’ll likely never see finished. Schools, hospitals, housing — paraded like gifts from a benevolent king. All paid for by you, the taxpayer.
It was a damage control measure dressed as generosity. Billions from State coffers blown on optics to shore up loyalty in a restless region.
Think about that: while families of murdered protesters still grieve, while youth are still unemployed, while hospitals run out of drugs, your money was used to fund a politician’s survival circus.
This is the bottomless pit. Every shilling stolen, every “official visit” disguised as development, every staged photo op is money gone from your pocket.
Crooks don’t fear the cost of elections because elections are investments. They pour billions in, not because they love you, but because they know they’ll loot trillions back. Roads inflated tenfold. Tenders awarded to shell companies.
Taxes raised on essentials so they can refill the very pit they dug campaigning. And when the country screams, they don’t fix it. They buy time.
They hand out aprons to traders, reflectors to boda riders, and little grants to women’s groups. Trinkets are thrown like bones to keep us distracted.
But here’s the fortunate miscalculation. Kenyans are no longer blind.
The ulcer of corruption has burned too long. It has eaten through the stomach lining of this nation, leaving nothing but pain and rage.
They think a bag of unga can erase the memory of lost jobs. They think a convoy of Land Cruisers can hide the stench of stolen billions.
They think a staged speech can replace a child’s education, or drugs missing in a hospital. They are wrong. The ulcer festers. The pain accumulates. And pain is a memory that no handout can buy.
We need to strip away their illusion. Politics doesn’t have to be this expensive. Campaigns don’t have to be financed by cartels, foreign governments, or billionaires pulling strings behind the curtain. Leadership bought this way is not leadership — it is debt repayment.
Every shilling a crook “invests” in elections is a future contract, a tender, a favour owed. That’s why every administration ends up serving financiers instead of citizens.
There is only one clean source of political money: us. Citizens, small donors, the private sector standing independent of state capture. Imagine it — millions of Kenyans chipping in Sh100, Sh500, Sh1,000 through M-Pesa.
Diaspora Kenyans sending remittances, not just to families, but to crowdfund leaders who actually owe us, not cartels. Imagine the firewall this creates: leaders accountable only to voters, not to faceless tycoons.
Campaigns run lean, transparent, fuelled by citizen sacrifice rather than cartel corruption. That’s the only way leadership can ever serve the people. Everything else is compromised.
Kenyans, hear this clearly. The political elite think they can kill your children, loot your taxes, strangle your future, and then walk into your village with bags of flour and reflectors to buy forgiveness.
They believe you’re too hungry to resist, too desperate to remember. They believe their billions will always beat your rage. That is their greatest mistake.
Take their money if you must—it is yours, stolen from your sweat. But when it comes to the ballot, to the streets, to the fight for this country, let rage guide you, not bribes.
Remember that good leadership doesn’t exist in the hands of billionaires or shadowy donors. It exists only when we, the people, fund it ourselves.
Let your anger burn, into action, not despair. Dare to believe in your own chosen leaders, then push them all the way. Mobilise without waiting for handouts.
Reject the theatrics. Tear down the smoke and mirrors. The crooks may win the show, but the war belongs to us, if we stop letting them buy the stage.
