YVONNE'S TAKE: Kenya's perpetual campaigns tragedy

That is how far we are from the next national poll. And yet, you would be forgiven for thinking we are weeks away from voting day. The country is in full campaign mode.

From the ruling side to the opposition benches. From those declaring “agendas” to those baptising themselves as the conscience of the republic. From prayer rallies to meet-the-people tours. From fund drives to so-called consultative forums. From roadside addresses to carefully choreographed town halls. Everyone is on the road.

And here is the part that should trouble us most: these campaigns began even before electoral commissioners were sworn in. Before an electoral body could even declare an official campaign period. Before any gazette notice could legally open the season. We are campaigning in a vacuum.

Under Kenya’s electoral framework, principally the Elections Act, campaigns are not supposed to be permanent. The campaign period is meant to be formally declared by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. In 2025, the High Court of Kenya made it clear: campaigning outside the gazetted period is unconstitutional and illegal. The court warned about precisely what we are now witnessing- a country trapped in endless electioneering. Yet here we are.

Campaigns without a declared campaign period. Mobilisation without regulation. Political messaging without accountability.

And no side, not one, appears willing to pause and ask whether the rule of law applies to them too.

All of this is happening as if three million Kenyans are not staring at hunger. As if the Grade 10 transition crisis is not confronting parents and students with uncertainty over infrastructure and preparedness. As if petty and serious crime are not rising in cities like Nairobi, where insecurity is no longer an abstract debate but a lived experience. As if youth unemployment is not a daily emergency. As if the cost of living has magically resolved itself. As if public hospitals are not strained. As if climate shocks are not displacing families. As if public trust in institutions is not fragile.

Instead, we have convoys. Rallies. Fundraisers. Alignments and realignments. Coalitions before coalitions are even legally necessary. Noise! We have leaders behaving as though governance is a side hustle, and campaigning is the main job.

Perhaps the most unsettling development is this: political meetings and groupings are now being hosted in national institutions meant to serve all Kenyans. State House Nairobi is a public institution. The National Treasury Kenya is a public institution. They are not party headquarters. They are not ethnic community halls.

Yet we are seeing gatherings that are unmistakably political, sometimes explicitly tribal, taking place within spaces that are constitutionally meant for national purpose. When a Cabinet Secretary convenes a meeting of his own ethnic community within the Treasury to discuss “community issues” and to position himself politically, what signal does that send? That the state is neutral? Or that state power is simply a platform for early succession politics?

We cannot, on the one hand, preach national cohesion, and on the other, normalise ethnic political caucuses within the machinery of government. We cannot insist on the rule of law and simultaneously act as if campaign laws are optional.

What is perhaps most telling is that there is no clean side here. Those in government say they are engaging citizens. Those in opposition say they are mobilising for accountability. Those declaring a new moral order say they are offering an alternative. But who among them is willing to say: let us respect the law on campaign timelines? Who is willing to voluntarily step back? Who is willing to say governance first, politics later?

If the High Court has spoken, where is the urgency to legislate clear sanctions? Where is the self-restraint? Where is the example?

Good governance is not something you promise at a rally. It is something you practice when it inconveniences you.

Perpetual campaigns distort priorities. They advantage the loudest and best funded. They exhaust citizens. They deepen division. They hollow out governance. When leaders spend more time counting political numbers than solving national problems, the country becomes a stage, not a state. And perhaps that is the deeper question we must ask:

Or are we a political marketplace permanently in season?

Eighteen months is a long time in the life of a nation struggling with hunger, insecurity and institutional strain. The law anticipated this danger. The court warned about it.