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Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka is not guaranteed to win the presidency in 2027. However, barring any unforeseen developments, he represents the best chance for Kenya to have the competitive presidential election we deserve.
We do not have a lazy electoral cycle marked by herding of Kenyans into their respective ethnic pens and low-brow politics of cynical mchongoano. We deserve a competitive politics characterised by high-minded discourse over policy and the future of the country. For that reason, Musyoka owes Kenyans a more serious campaign than what he has offered so far.
Back in 2022, we made a significant leap in the content of our politics. Thanks to the works of public intellectuals like David Ndii, Kwame Owino, Karuti Kanyinga, and others, economistic thinking became a staple of political discourse. We did politics not just in the language of “tyranny of numbers” and ethnic emotional blackmail, but also in terms of policy.
Thanks to the “bottom-up economic agenda” and the “hustler vs dynasty” sloganeering that went with it, the cost-of-living crisis, how to create more jobs, size of the public debt, utility of big projects like the Standard Gauge Railway, among others became commonplace discussions among the proverbial mama mbogas and boda bodas.
