Week 29: Keeping Democracy alive

Democracy (“rule by the people”) is considered the least bad among an array of problematic options of how to govern people, organize and regulate towards common good.

The success of the Democratic experiment is predicated on the meaningful engagement of the people. Undergirded by the belief that every person is equal and has a right of say, Democracy (The rule by the people or mob rule) proposed that the aspirations of the people will be faithfully articulated and delivered. 

The disillusionment of present day is the pervasive feeling that the people’s voice is lost. In the dominant democratic practice of electing a people’s representative, increasingly the people are questioning “Whose voice is he/she representing?”

There are two possible reasons for the perceived disconnect and loss of the people’s voice:

First the reality of a present-day dynamic world. Things are changing fast. For instance, the people elected a spokesperson before the pandemic. But the spokesperson has to cast a vote on behalf of the people about lockdown measures, vaccine obligations and tax increases to pay for a loan taken for a vaccine that the people may not have access due to shortage of supplies. There is no written obligation that the spokesperson to engage with the electorate again. Arguably this could be healed by accentuating the values of the people. At all times then the spokesperson would have a north star of society values that would guide the decision making and voting.

A second possible source of disconnect, the deliberate usurping of the people’s voice – the experience of “voice capture”. So to say a manipulation or corruption of the people’s voiced intentions that undermines the common good and private interest ends up influencing the share of resources to maximize private benefit at the expense of the masses.

This is manifest in a graduated scale:

• At the cheapest level the politician (people’s spokesperson) ends up being a wolf in sheep’s cloth. Once the political seat is secured in an electoral win they turn a deaf ear on the people and instead use the position of influence for their own personal gain. This is arguably a pain the Kenyan electorate can relate to. Within one political win the politician becomes a mogul with big cars, affluence, and vast business interest – oftentimes through the ugly “tender- preneurship” with all government contracts having to give “fungu la kumi” (10%) or more to oil the politicians hands. The people have very weak, if any, tools to hold the politician to account or recall him/her back to base for some discipline or firing.

• The next level things are a bit systemic: the politician is corrupt from the onset. He will buy the voters, import voters, and even use power and influence to manipulate the true outcome of the people’s voice. There is probably too much for the politician to lose. It is do or die. If he/she loses the immunity and influence from being the seat bearer, possibly jail term awaits. Sometimes the tactics can get as bad as intimidating people or even eliminating those against. The people’s feeble attempts to overcome the dark cloud that descended on them wanes over time and they resign to their fate of “Bora Uhai” (Better to preserve my life) and continue numbingly to etch an increasingly burdensome life giving the politician a free pass to have their way on resources. The people are not disillusioned that the candidate before them is a fraud. But what to do? The fraud spokesperson is now the “system” and corrodes away the social fabric for his/her gain.

Despair can easily become endemic in some sardonic Stockholm syndrome way where the people may begin to identify with and even elevate the corruptible leader as their own arguing "Hey, I know he/she is bad but that is my bad apple, don't you attack mine"

How can society break such an evil chain? Franz Fanon lens may provide an answer.

In reflecting on democracy, Fanon argued that democracy is hinged on 3 main tenets:

Accountability – “no leader, however valuable he may be, can substitute himself for the popular will.” 

Decentralization - “... getting the mass of the people interested in the management of public affairs…. even if it takes them two or three times as long.”

Political education – “...Try, relentlessly and passionately, to teach the masses that everything depends on them, that if we stagnate it is their responsibility, and that if we go forward it is due to them too.”

The Constitution of Kenya 2010 (KC2010) makes a good effort to strengthen accountability and decentralization, the third feels like the weakest leg on the three legged stool. Though education is a mandate of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), the perennial underfunding of the commission has made this an elusive undertaking in depth and scale.

The question of meaningful political education also comes to play – is it enough to be informed of the right to vote?

The constitution mandated participation to buttress accountability. However, in many public participations processes it feels like simply a democracy spectacle: “The people speak, but there’s no guarantee anyone is listening. The question, then, is: Must participants actually make a difference in the policies they discuss for these forums to have impact?” (Polletta 2002). In the case of city planning, ordinary citizens are called in to debate technical outputs often times trimmed out of their historical, social context not to mention the technical legalese of the exceptions in fine print. Even with a university education, one would feel beyond their depth to engage meaningfully.

There are no easy and straight “fix it” answers of how to keep democracy alive by keeping it true to its form of growing the critical awareness that:

The highest office in a democracy is the office of the citizen.