By Dorcas S
Let me cut to the chase: Independent candidacy is the very essence of electoral democratic politics plain and simple. That this is even a discussion indicates how beholden to special interest the (voting) process has become. It is also the reason why the “3rd Way” offered by independent candidacy is needed.
Yes I want the National Super Alliance (NASA) Party to send the corrupt and incompetent Jubilee Alliance home come August 2017. Only the most rabid toadies would argue against the very obvious truism:
That the digital experiment that is the “coalition of the crimes-against-humanity suspects” has been an abject failure and anyone who doubts that just has to look at the saga over the availability and the price of corn meal – unga.
This piece, however, is NOT about the corruption and lack of leadership that birthed the food crisis in Kenya. It is to voice support for independent candidates in the upcoming elections.
Let the candidates, independent and of major parties – NASA, Jubilee, Wiper et al – sell you, the voter, their respective policy proposals and legislative agendas and like I responded to a post the other day, may the one with the best ideas win.
(NOTE: The “sell” you the voter means “convince” you the voter; not “pay” you the voter for your votes!)
If any of the independent candidates wins in August, maybe that would be a warning to the major parties to up their game and find out why a candidate that lost in the(ir) party primary won in the main election – running as an independent.
I don’t think much of Donald Trump’s character but his candidacy was as close to an independent run as it gets – especially given the push back he got from the Republican and Democratic establishments. However, DJT’s “Make America Great Again” tapped into something primal among the white voters in America’s rust and bible belt that none of his opponents in the GOP and Hillary Clinton fully understood. That’s why he won.
The book “Hillbilly Elegy” by JD Vance is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding why Trump won the 2016 US Elections.
And while his administration’s first one hundred days have been the very embodiment of corrupt and incompetent leadership, candidate Trump successfully took on the Republican Party and won. He then proceeded to go mano-a-mano with another establishment-backed personality Hillary Clinton and to everyone’s surprise including his own, he won! The other candidate who was as independent and outside the main stream of a major party was Barack Obama in 2008. This is particularly true when his candidacy was/is placed alongside that of his opponents including Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. However, like DJT’s “Make America Great Again”, Mr. Obama’s “Hope” and “Change” campaign tag lines convinced more than sixty million Americans to vote for him. And given the diversity of Obama’s winning coalition which mirrors NASA’s regional partnerships (in Kenya), Raila should be encouraging independent candidates to run – especially in the non-NASA strongholds.
Simply put, Kenya needs independent candidates who will then force the victors to form coalitions beyond the ethnic coalitions to pass legislations; to govern.
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