You cannot campaign without promises. Promises are political fishing lures.
“There is a time for everything,” Ecclesiastes says, and it should be required reading for every politician — right after the Constitution and just before their M-Pesa balance check. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to campaign and a time to govern. Mixing the two is like wearing gumboots to your own swearing-in: unforgettable, but for all the wrong reasons, and someone will definitely post the photos.
Campaigning is the Trailer. Governing is the Movie.
Campaigning is theatre, complete with spotlights, soundbites, and the occasional dancing. Governing is carpentry: dusty, unglamorous, and measured in millimetres, not applause. One requires a microphone; the other requires a tape measure and the humility to realise the house you promised has plumbing.
You cannot campaign without promises. Promises are political fishing lures. Shout “tax holiday”, and businesspeople swarm like teenagers to free Wi-Fi. Whisper “cheap fertiliser”, and farmers appear faster than your uncles when they hear nyama choma is ready. Promises get you hired. But promising when in office is like a waiter who keeps reading the menu after taking your order. Sir, we are hungry. Bring the food before we review-bomb the restaurant.
Robert Greene put it best in Law 9 of - The 48 Laws of Power: “Win through your actions, never through argument.” Demonstration beats explanation. Arguments leave lawsuits and Twitter threads. Results leave tarmac, textbooks, and very quiet opposition MPs.
History Favours Builders.
Otto von Bismarck did not unify Germany with a podcast. He said the great questions of the day would be settled by “iron and blood,” then proved it by fighting Denmark, Austria, and France. Brutal? Yes. On-brand for 19th-century Europe? Also yes. Germany exists today, so the scoreboard tilts Bismarck.
Deng Xiaoping inherited a China drowning in slogans. Slogans, he noted, do not pay school fees or build railways. His Cabinet meetings were shorter than most people’s TikTok attention spans — under five minutes — yet he rewired China toward capitalism with special economic zones. He did not debate ideology. He let GDP do the shouting. Turns out money is bilingual and very persuasive.
Steve Jobs faced a boardroom convinced a phone without a keyboard was like a matatu without a tout — fundamentally unserious. He did not argue. He shipped the iPhone. BlackBerry later sent its regards from the museum of dead tech.
Now, the cautionary tales. In 1917, Alexander Kerensky was Russia’s most gifted orator, gliding from rally to rally selling democracy like it was Safaricom data bundles. Trotsky was out there pitching pure communism with equal flair. Lenin, a man of few words , outworked both, took power, then arranged for Trotsky to have a fatal encounter with an assassin's axe in South America for his many beautiful but useless speeches.
The French Revolution adds a footnote. The Girondins were brilliant lawyers serving the revolutionary government with speeches so pretty you would frame them for your living room. The Jacobins were less poetic but action-oriented. The Girondins lost their heads and were dispatched to heaven, proving that in power, results outweigh rhetoric.
Money is the Awkward Ex You Cannot Quit, but whom you must divorce once in power.
Campaigns run on cash — rallies, posters, and the ancient art of “kupanga ground.” But governing requires breaking up with lavish spending, or the treasury files for divorce. Machiavelli, history’s most brutally honest uncle, warned in The Prince that a ruler is better off being called a miser than being loved for generosity with public funds. Why? Because “men forget the death of their father more quickly than the loss of their patrimony.” Translation: voters will forgive many things, but touch their wallets and forgiveness evaporates faster than a puddle in Lodwar.
He did leave one loophole: you can be generous with other people’s money. If you somehow secured Ugandan gold and used it to drill boreholes in Turkana, you will be a hero. That’s Geopolitics 101 — ancient as empires, current as headlines. People love a windfall, especially when the invoice goes to someone else.
See Trump of USA and Venezuela. Or Russia Putin with Ukraine.
Campaigning is seduction; leading is marriage. One is poetry recited under a spotlight. The other is school fees paid in silence. Promises win you the seat; performance keeps the chair from being pulled while you are sitting.
So here’s the rule, Ecclesiastes-style: There is a season to promise and a season to perform. The season of promise ends the moment you take the oath. After that, every extra speech is interest accruing on a debt of delivery.
Plant during campaigns. Harvest in office. And for the love of the governed, once you enter office -say Member of Parliament, put down the microphone and pick up a shovel.
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Dr Irungu Kangata is the Governor for Murang'a County. Email [email protected]
