OPINION: Money and politics - How handouts are changing trends in political violence and governance

In the forthcoming 2022 elections, all Kenyans plus the relevant authorities should be worried and prepared for imminent electoral violence. This will not come in the form of targeted ethnic clashes per se, that pit one community against the other, but rather in the form of localised conflicts where perpetrators will be settling personal scores against each other.

Why is this the case? 

The current context where political contenders have established financial handouts as the most credible means by which to reach the electorate has heightened voter demands for cash.

This is as opposed to encouraging national, county, constituency, and ward considerations of development programs for people’s wellbeing.

Recent news coverage plus reports, while exaggerated for political effect or not, signal a build-up of local tensions in relation to money being dished out at rallies by various actors across the political divide. 

Various groups mobilized to attend rallies end up fighting for spoils after grievances emerge when factions within them feel short-changed by others.

This should be an issue of serious concern in the coming days in terms of how money influences politics. 

On one hand, most analysis tends to focus on how electoral financing influences policymaking in terms of new legislation and regulation among other aspects of officialdom. 

However, in the Kenyan case, the problem spills over causing cyclical violence with every election.

As opposed to violent protests, intercommunal violence is highly personal.

While it doesn’t aim to evict or exterminate communities as is the case with large scale targeted ethnic conflict, the localization of conflict removes the geographic diversity of perpetrators. 

What starts as positive youth mobilization towards political gains, is bound to evolve into violent local factions constantly looking out to fix each other through attacks.

This puts children in indiscriminate danger and is bound to subject women to more acts of sexual violence due to the existence of, for all intents and purposes, mini gangs.

It also shifts away responsibility from politicians leaving the blame squarely on local criminals.

Local proliferation of hooliganism is bound to overwhelm an already stretched justice, law, and order system.

The government machinery will mostly be contending with day-to-day security roles such as countering terrorism, civil protection, crime prevention, regime security, and public safety.

How then will the hooligans be held legally responsible when there are many other demands, such as guarding ballots or polling stations, while various groups are constantly clashing over money dished out by politicians?

Essentially, this problem opens the electoral process to procedural fraud in the next elections, thereby casting doubt on its integrity, and maybe the source of voter apathy as witnessed in the poor voter registration in recent days.

Clearly, moral appeals by institutions such as National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC), religious figures plus their respective bodies, civil society, and even the media against this open bribery are proving futile in stopping the trend.

As citizens and leaders across various strata of society, under the premise of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 (COK 2010), Kenyans should work hard to stop normalization of this abnormality.

We cannot achieve the ideals of an entrepreneurial, and prosperous country using retrogressive political practices that are distorting the safety, stability, and security of the society.  

In continuing this handout culture, wrongdoing saturates into the whole edifice of the country thereby resulting in a new and unintentional acceptance or justification of future corruption.

Novel gains such as the establishment of devolution and the management of county government will be the first to be undermined by such circumstances of dishing out money left, right, and center because the ideas of service delivery will be made redundant.

Therefore, government agencies should swing in with the full force of law to curtail the sinister influence of money in politics before it is too late.

The author comments on development, governance, and international relations. Follow @lennwanyama