Creatives from different parts of the country march the IEBC offices in Nakuru East to mobilise young Kenyans to register as voters on March 31, 2026.
There is a strange thing that happens to Kenyans whenever election season begins to gather in the horizon.
A people who have stared down police lines, survived terrible governments, built lives out of almost nothing, raised children through impossible economies, and carried this republic on their backs suddenly begin to speak as if power lives somewhere else.
We start whispering about “the system.” About “the deep state.” About “the owners of Kenya.” About the invisible hands that will decide for us who comes next.
And before we know it, we have surrendered the one thing the Constitution already told us was ours: sovereignty. Kenyans must remember who they are.
We are not guests in this republic. We are not an audience seated quietly in the gallery while powerful men on a stage decide the shape of our lives.
We are the owners of this country. Not symbolically. Legally, historically, morally, politically. Kenya belongs to Kenyans.
That sounds obvious until you listen to how we talk about 2027. Already, the national conversation is being quietly narrowed into a tired little corridor.
Ruto must go, yes. But then what? Who is “viable”? Who has “machinery”? Who can “match the state”? Who can “mobilise the region”? Who is “acceptable” to the same networks that have mismanaged this country for decades?
And somehow, without noticing, we begin to reduce a whole republic to a menu of lesser evils. Let me be clear. Removing William Ruto and his regime from government is important. Very important. The economic pain is real. The overtaxation is real.
The arrogance is real. The gap between the campaign poetry and the lived reality of Kenyans has become too wide to hide under another clever slogan. Millions of people are tired, angry, stretched, and disappointed, and they have every right to be.
But removing Ruto is only half the assignment. The more important question is to whom we hand over the government. Because we’ve been here before. We have removed one set of people only to discover that the new people arrived carrying the same habits.
We have celebrated transitions that quickly became renovations of the old order. New faces. Old appetites. New colours. Old contempt. New speeches. Old networks. And by the time the music stops, the mwananchi is back where they started, only now with a fresh vocabulary for betrayal.
So no, 2027 cannot simply be “anyone but Ruto”. A country cannot build its future from fatigue alone. Anger can remove a government, but it cannot design a republic.
Pain can mobilise people, but it cannot replace the hard work of choosing wisely. If all we do is gather our frustration and hand it to the nearest available alternative, we will have a confused reaction for renewal.
We must refuse the insult that our only political imagination is choosing who will disappoint us less. We must refuse the idea that the presidency is a rotating table for familiar families, exhausted coalitions, regional brokers, and men who believe the country is owed to them because they have waited long enough.
We must refuse the smallness that tells us competence is unrealistic, integrity is naive, and accountability is too expensive to demand.
Who decided that Kenya cannot be led by serious people? Who decided that our choices must always come pre-approved by cartels, financiers, ethnic arithmetic, and foreign comfort?
Who decided that the will of the people must bend before the convenience of the powerful?
We are not a weak people. Look at our history. We have never been passive for long. We pushed for independence. We fought for multiparty democracy. We ended KANU’s long rule when it looked immovable.
We demanded a new Constitution and gave ourselves one. We have resisted bad laws, exposed scandals, built businesses in hostile conditions, educated children through school systems that should have collapsed, and kept this nation breathing even when its leaders were busy looting the oxygen.
So why do we suddenly become timid at the ballot? Why do we lower our standards just when our standards matter most?
The next president of Kenya must not be treated as a saviour. That person must be interrogated properly. Not by how loudly they oppose Ruto. Not by how many crowds they can gather.
Not by how much nostalgia their name carries. Not by how well they can speak the language of suffering while surrounded by people who have profited from it.
We must ask harder questions. When they had power, what did they do with it? Did they build institutions or build themselves? Did they protect public money or merely complain when others stole it? Do they believe in devolution, or do they only remember counties during campaigns? Do they respect the courts when rulings are inconvenient? Do they surround themselves with thinkers, builders, and truth-tellers, or with praise singers and ethnic accountants? Do they understand debt, jobs, food systems, healthcare, education, technology, and the actual machinery of government? Or are they simply fluent in outrage?
It is not enough to want change. We must define it. We must test it. We must organise around it. We must make it expensive for anyone to ask for power without a serious plan. The presidency cannot continue being a reward for political stamina. It must become a job with standards.
And yes, some will call this idealism. They always do. In Kenya, asking for basic competence is treated like childish dreaming.
Asking for clean leadership is treated like moral fiction. Asking for a government that does not punish citizens for the greed of leaders is treated like we are being unreasonable.
We are not choosing between evils. We are choosing what kind of country our children will inherit. We are choosing whether public office remains a feeding trough or becomes a duty.
We are choosing whether the next government will simply inherit the machinery of extraction or dismantle it. We are choosing whether Kenya becomes a country where young people can build futures at home, where taxes translate into services, where hospitals work, schools function, farmers earn, businesses grow, and public resources are treated with the seriousness of sacred trust.
Kenyans must remember who they are. We are the sovereign. We are the employers. We are the final authority. The people in office are temporary custodians, and when they forget that, we must remind them. Firmly. Decisively. In the standards we set long before campaigns begin.
The writer is an active citizen and tech start-up owner. Email: [email protected]
