Politics is the activities associated with the governance of a country, a county, an organized entity, while a politician is a person who is professionally involved in politics more so a holder of an elected office.
Our constitution at Article 38 embodies political rights as a fundamental right in the Bill of Rights. It guarantees every citizen freedom to make political choices and which include the right to form or participate in forming a political party, to participate in the activities of a political party, to campaign for a political party or cause.
The constitution doesn’t put any limitation on political rights and one is free to politic twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty days over and over whether elections are due or not.
Equally Article 33 of the constitution guarantees freedom of expression and which freedom is only limited in so far as it does not extend to propaganda for war, incitement, to violence, hate speech, or advocacy for hatred.
It is therefore laughable, unconstitutional, the height of civic myopia for any politician, citizen or whoever to be heard to allege that leaders, citizens should not engage in politics because there are no elections pending or they are in 2022. Governance is at the heart of it. Governance is a twenty four seven, three hundred and sixty days cycle activity and it is only those who do not want to be transparent, accountable who can have the temerity to allege that people, leaders should not engage in politics, that it is time for development? Development itself is politics through and through. For after all it is a question of who gets what, which region gets what? What corruption is inherent in the development? How rational is the development? How faster is the development being delivered? etc.
The ‘handshake’ is politics ‘the building bridges initiative’ is politics, same to the ‘Big Four Agenda’, the elephant in the room is who is framing the politics. Whether one gets a bursary is politics, whether one gets subsidized fertilizer is politics, whether your local hospital will get medicine is politics, and the same applies to whether a road will be made through your area. To have or not to have a referendum is politics. To keep quiet and do nothing and let others plunder your nation’s resources is the same game. It is only a nincompoop, idiot who will buy the nonsense that there is a right time for politics and another time for development.
The question is how do we frame, arrange, plan, structure the politics of our region through voter registration being ready to come out and vote when its voting time in a manner that leverages our social economic and political interests in the context of the Nation of Kenya.
Nobody should fool you and me that we should freeze our politics so that President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga can dictate how our country shall be governed now and beyond.
Politics is the lifeblood of public governance and it ought to be indulged in without limitations. Those elected must speak their politics through development. Those who are not elected must speak their politics by pointing out the flaws of the development of those elected and what better alternatives they will initiate if they are elected. The citizenry must ceaselessly politic if they’re not receiving the development promised by the cunning politicians during election time.
The elected leaders must learn to navigate the politics as it is the only tool that will keep them accountable. Debates, discussions, interviews, viewpoints,interrogations on governance must continue to be vibrant until we get what we deserve from those elected to lead and the public servants, the elected leaders are obligated to oversight and keep on their toes so that they deliver development and not as is now the case where they deliver corruption, impoverishment, inefficient services death in hospitals etc.
For elected leaders, those feeding on the fat of the tax payers be told in no uncertain terms that the citizenry will only relent on politics if you deliver on your constitutional mandates. Yes, it is a game for all seasons because men and women entrusted to lead, govern, immediately upon election become cannibals and eat everything they are entrusted to be stewards of the electorate.