POLITICS: THE GAME OF NUMBERS

Its a calculation

Let us assume that we can trust our media when they report that there are 40,000 MCA aspirants in the whole country for the 1,422 available slots. This means that each ward has an average of 28 aspirants’ pre-nominations! This is quite a huge resource you know!
Now let’s digest the implications of these figures;
1) ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS
The aspirants pay an average Ksh.20, 000 to the parties to secure nomination papers. This adds up to 800 million. This is money from savings, loans, gifts, disposal of assets and God knows where else! Serious money released to the economy.
For an applicant to get necessary clearances as per sec.6 of the constitution; HELB(1050), DCI(1050), EACC(1000), CRB(2,200), KRA(0) They fork out a total of Ksh.5,300 each totaling to Ksh.212 million! This however ignores other overhead costs like transport, meals and kickbacks!
In order to mobile their troops to back them in the nominations, there is substantial facilitation required. For the general elections, the IEBC capped expenditure by MCAs at 10.3 million. Suppose we say at nominations, we can only have these aspirants use 10% of this limit each; this will mean each one needs at least Ksh.1 million to successfully campaign for nominations! In total, Ksh. 40 billion will be injected into the economy to facilitate campaigns for nominations alone!
In a nutshell, pre-nominations campaign for MCAs alone has a gross contribution of a little over Ksh. 42 billion to the country’s economy! If there is one man who loves this game of figures is CS Henry Rotich!
Throw in some other figures from MPs, Senators, Governors, Women Reps and presidential candidates!

2) SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS
There are 1,422 administrative units called Wards in the 47 counties across the country. According to IEBC stats, there are about 14.4 million (Give or take due to pending register clean up) registered voters across the country. This is not inclusive of prisoners and those in the diaspora. A quick calculation means each ward has an average 10,200 voters.
As at Monday 6th March 2017, Kenya has a population of 48,066,894 citizens. (Source: www.worldometers.info). With this in mind, each ward has an average population of 33,802 people! A further breakdown shows that each ward has an average 23,000 children below the age of 18 (including adults who have not registered!)!! Eeiiish! Kenyans can be productive I say!
Okay, let’s look at the stats soberly! Let’s say after nominations, only 12 of the 26 aspirants actually get nominated and actually run for the post of MCA! The law here is very lenient and grants the winner the seat by any majority! Not necessarily 50%+1!
Assuming this is a hotly contested seat and give the winner 42%(4,284 votes), The runners up 35%(3,570 votes), The second runners up 20%(2,040), then the rest of the aspirants can share the balance in whatever ratio! At this point, who cares? We have an MCA!! Yeeeiiiiy!
However, we all have this tendency to negative ethnicity! Unhealthy competition and always feel the need to divide the electorate based on party lines, religion, race…name them! At the end of the day, we create enemies in the society!
Suppose you are the winner, 4,284 votes! Say these voters who voted for you have families of about 6,000 people (Unregistered adults and kids), That means only 10,000 people supported your candidacy by default! How do you propose to manage over 20,000 citizens as enemies for 5 years in your ward? This is two thirds of your ward my frenn! Fanya hesabu zako poa!
Endeavor to co-exist with your opponents! Healthy politics is about compromise and conceding honorably! Don’t mess this generation only to win an election and divide the future generations in the process!