It would seem that Kenya is going into an election this August that’s largely about nothing. No big idea, no galvanizing issue. This hasn’t happened since the reintroduction of political pluralism in late 1991 and the elections that followed in 1992. That said, there are those who will be voting against either William S. Ruto or Raila A. Odinga come August. This group is committed and energized. It is seized by the election. Ironically, in the 2007 election Raila Odinga was the bogeyman of Kenyan politics—the man to fear, the master of chaos, etc. Today the very people who spewed that narrative are in wild reverse and the deputy president is the new bad guy in town. Unfortunately for him, Ruto has in the past seemed to embrace and project his darker side, to revel in the fear he engenders. As a bogeyman to the middle class, he has proven to be a good fit. That so many of his foes have met an untimely end adds to this dark myth.

Since 1992, and in 1997 and 2002 in particular, our elections have not lacked what some like to call “the vision thing”. We were voting against Moi’s authoritarianism and the one-party state, yes, but we were also voting for political pluralism, a new constitution and devolution. We were voting for good governance, anti-corruption, human rights, transparency and all those other nice woolly things that have created the open society we enjoy today. In the meantime, a host of new governance arrangements have come into being. In 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta and William S. Ruto sought the vote under a new constitution promulgated in 2010 and went to the polls under the heavy cloud of the International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments. The “dynamic duo” promised to spend money, to spend on everything for everyone. They did the same in 2017—no big idea, just spending—but this time round, the 2017 election failed dramatically after the Supreme Court annulled it, leading to a legitimacy deficit for the Jubilee government.

Prior to these two polls, there were clearly articulated political forces forged by Moi arrayed against the grand issues of the day and those who defined themselves for them—a mixture of the political opposition, media, civil society, the religious sector, etc. In 2022 this clarity is gone—emphatically so! The latter are in disarray while the former are resurgent.

As we head into the August polls what is striking is that, beyond the avowedly populist but ultimately hollow “hustler” narrative, there is as yet no other game in town in the contest of political ideas. There is no other big narrative. More importantly, there is no other compelling hopeful narrative. The chattering classes are appalled that so vacuous a narrative as the “hustler” and the “wheelbarrow” has gained enough traction with a wide section of, in particular, the youthful population. Indeed, for the first time in Kenya’s history, the sitting head of state apparently doesn’t command the electoral numbers in his own political backyard as a result of this trend. This could yet change but it has never been like this so late in the day. In the dark days of KANU, these inconveniences were fixed by simply rigging the polls. This habit has of course continued since the rigged polls of 2007.

The truth is that we are going into an election believing in nothing, standing for nothing. At best, we are searching. All the leading political formations are born of each other and birthed by many profound compromises, and this in part explains the blankness. At a slightly lower political level, those consumed by making money off the state, cutting deals, winning contracts and fiddling tenders can barely contain their excitement as August approaches and new snouts can dip into the trough.