Published by the People Daily on the 27th November 2025
Shivanshu K. Srivastava, an Indian legal professional, writer and a newspaper columnist once noted that political discourse should be a platform for informed debate, policy discussions, and the presentation of ideas, rather than a space for personal attacks or the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes. By adhering to these guidelines, political parties can contribute to a more constructive and respectful public discourse.
In Kenya, it is heart wrenching that, political party ideology is replaced by idiocy and party policy is nothing but the whims of the political party chieftains and their glory. It is almost an acceptable trend that the political party lacking on manifesto merit but heavy with anti-sublime rhetoric being popular and bragging of heavy membership numbers. Political campaigns and debates are full of palaver and absurdity. Personalized attacks coached in coarse degrading and abusive language is fodder for political party honchos.
I keenly followed the political party leaders and their leaders as they traversed different parts of this country looking for votes and their performance score is below par. Despite the political parties having all the resources and time to adequately prepare for the bi-elections since they demand for attention is less, they went out with their mouthful arsenals trained on the opponents instead of marketing their ideology, development plans and strategies for better legislation and representation of their people.
The callousness in which political parties immersed themselves in the bi-election contest leaves a lot to be desired. The first glaring misnomer is the choice of candidates. A number of them are either related family-wise and or to the party leaders. No, need for checking on commitment to the party ideals, just family connection. A pure act of perpetuating family-politico empires and dynasties.
It is evident that most of the political parties did not conduct the party primaries, which is an integral part and practice of a healthy democratic society. It is rumored that the parties engaged in unorthodox method of dishing out certificates either to relatives, highest bidders or through negotiations or trade off.
The principle of affirmative action was thrown out to the recycling bins and consideration for the youth, PWDs and gender seemingly was only considered if the criteria favored and was in tandem with the whims and selfish benchmarks of the party masters.
The choice of the candidates fielded are also not of the top-notch and high grade. It was worrisome to see some of the highflying and widely touted as top contenders not being cut from the refined party lists. How can a political party field a candidate who is under scrutiny for grand corruption? What happened to the principal of background and due diligence check? I thought we could do better.
It was evident that most of the candidates were novices who were learning the ropes on the go. In some of the campaign rallies, it could be seen the senior party men and women shamelessly whispering to the candidates what to tell the crowds at times in the local dialect which some have no competence on.
The political parties also fronted their seasoned and battleground hardened ‘soldiers’ to lead the campaign bandwagons. However, their performance was deplorable. It was disheartening to see persons who hold senior government positions being reduced to levels where they had to heckle back crowds which didn’t support their ‘’person.’’ While they could have articulated government policy or party plans, they chose to be bad boys mudding the waters and engaging in mud throwing tantrums, shouting themselves hoarse. Some could not understand if they were campaigning for a coalition ‘broadbased’ candidate, a friendly ‘united opposition’ candidate or just a candidate.
The deployed campaign Martials representing the parties in the various campaign platforms missed the point completely. While they had a product to sell in the name of the party candidates, they detoured and only sang praise for themselves, their political party masters and their irrelevant quest for the 2027 general elections votes. They even transmitted this vice to the contestants who also campaigned for their masters, overstretching the tattered clichés of ‘tutam or wantam,’ indeed a theatre of absurdity.
The 24 bi-election processes pose a very disturbing concern on the ideological and moral standing of political parties in Kenya. The preparedness of political parties to contest in political elections should focus on the needs of the voters and not those of the masters. This concern can also be used as a good reference and learning point for political parties to reposition themselves and professionally ahead of the 2027 elections and the subsequent polls.
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