Last week, Mzee Ombui Orandi walked three kilometres to a presidential rally in Bomachoge, Kisii, and died in a stampede as the crowd scrambled for the standard Sh200 handout.
His life was barely acknowledged by those he had come to listen to. Kenya’s democracy is priced, and the system has already pegged an amount on each adult voter’s worth.
Next door in Nyaribari Chache Constituency, MP Zaheer Jhanda recently announced that he had ramped up the “listening allowance” from Sh500 to Sh1,000.
It is telling that the Bomachoge political rally was a presidential commissioning of projects — including the Gucha campus of the Kenya Medical Training College, and road construction works, both of which should mean something for local voters. Yet, the corrosive economy of contempt that pays for voters’ time, exclusion and irrelevance by pricing presence in a crowd, or posing the threat of violence in the name of security, could not be suppressed.
At an estimated 97 years, Mzee Orandi was eligible for a monthly income of Sh2,000 under the Inua Jamii older persons cash transfer, paid once every two months. His presence in a crowd for 10 minutes could secure 10 per cent of what the State says is his worth. This is the unit price of participation at the bottom of the political economy — for attendance, cheering and waiting long enough for your body to fit into the camera lens. Every day, poverty is being instrumentalised in deciding people’s futures. Democracy is not missing, but has been put on sale.
In this marketplace, the remnants of moral voice are in retreat, advising voters to take or eat the money but “vote wisely”.
The election infrastructure overarching this political economy on the ground is institutionalising alienation. Next year, Kenya will spend close to Sh60 billion on the General Election: that is the official figure. If the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission expands the vote register to 30 million, each vote will cost Sh2,000.
Kenya’s elections will still be three times more expensive than the global average of $5 (Sh655). In 2017 and 2022, over one third of the registered voters did not turn out to vote. If the same pattern holds in the 2027 elections, the unit cost per actual vote could easily reach Sh3,000.
IEBC prepares for everyone, but fewer and fewer come out to rubber-stamp the arithmetic of alienation. And so the cost per actual voter rises even higher — because the system prepares for everyone, but convinces fewer and fewer to show up.
Every election cycle, the government spends billions of shillings trying to secure elections through technology, logistics, courts and security deployments. Meanwhile, politicians are busy spending millions to undermine the same process — through bribery, mobilisation payments and patronage networks. The voter is caught in the middle: distrusted by the system and distrustful of it in return.
Kenya spends billions on elections because of a trust deficit. Distrust is the social currency of Kenya’s elections. Trust has become so scarce that there is a yearly scramble to replace it with cash, gadgets, guns, and court orders. Unfortunately, money — large or small — cannot buy legitimacy.
These money games erode popular sovereignty and relegate citizens to spectator roles where they are no longer the authors of political power. They are its audience — and occasionally just collateral. They are summoned to rallies, queues and polling stations. For their time, exclusion, and irrelevance, they receive the price of sugar and the cost of tea leaves.
Paying listening allowance
Meanwhile, decisions about power are made elsewhere, and people’s interests are the last to feature. Where trust is low and accountability weak, participation must be induced — even seduced or coerced. As politicians harvest from elections, citizens are forced to endure them.
Bribing voters and paying listening allowance may appear like an aberration, but the confirmation of the social trust deficit. The fewer people who believe, the more they need to be paid.
Distrust seeps from institutions into communities, from elites into crowds, until citizens begin to relate to democracy the way politicians do: as a marketplace.
Democracy, as it is currently practised, is alienating voters. It is no longer about what they want but which politician wins the argument. Individuals are summoned to cheer, queue and vote. For their time, exclusion and irrelevance, they receive a pittance — the price of sugar and a packet of tea leaves. The architecture of elections needs to change.
Because the less we believe, the more we must spend to compensate for disbelief.
Mzee Ombui Orandi’s tragic death should be a warning and a reminder that sovereignty, once hollowed out, will reappear in distorted forms — in crowds, in cash exchanges and in moments of desperation.
The writer is a board member of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and writes in his individual capacity. @kwamchetsi; [email protected]
