At the end of the fifth year since the landmark 2002 elections, Kenyans get the chance to elect their representatives to various positions in the local government, the national assembly and most prominently the headship of the executive arm of government. Kenyans will turn out in droves to show their preferences, often braving long queues and even intimidation.

But the excitement of December is dead a few months later, as the very problems that beset the electorate before the election set in, and they discover that most of the leaders they have just elected are not up to the required standards.

Local elections
There is a tendency in the national psyche to concentrate all our attention on the presidential and parliamentary elections, but there are important vote contests closer to your home too. When we give our vote for a councilor, we as Kenyans vote not stake our choice for the leadership of our civic wards, but we are also selecting out of the pool the candidate we trust would best make decisions on our behalf at council level, lobby for projects and better services in our wards, vote in crucial matters including the mayoral election and perhaps most crucially stand as mayor or chairman of our local government authority. We can therefore not take this vote lightly, three-piece voting and other such formulae where we neglect our duty to conduct due diligence on the candidates, may very well land us with rogue mayors or the kind of incessant wrangling that has cursed such major city halls as Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu.

Most Kenyans who live in urban areas like cities or municipalities choose to register as voters in their upcountry areas and thus deprive themselves of the chance to elect the officials who will serve as their leaders in the areas they inhabit for most of the five year period after the elections. In Nairobi for example, it is common to see people look with derision at the often ridiculous antics of their councillors, forgetting all the while that it is either their choices or apathy that has led to these councillors occupancy of these positions of privilege. It is not uncommon either to see Kenyans look down on the councillors' choices of mayors and council chairmen, again forgetting that the quality of councillors, and as a result their likely voting patterns are determined entirely by voter choices at the elections.

This distance between the voter and the heads of the local council may soon be reviewed under proposals to have direct elections for the positions of mayors and council chairmen. The choice of who will govern the boards that make decisions over our local government regions will then be firmly in voters' hands, and with it increased responsibility that we look carefully before selecting our representatives.

City Hall, Nairobi

Parliamentary Elections
One level up and we have witnessed repeated situations where MPs have been elected on heroic anti-corruption platforms and have only a short time later been discovered to be knee-deep in corrupt practices including the misappropriation or abuse of Constituency Development Fund (CDF) allocations or the use of such funds to enrich relatives and friends. This is all very well in one-off instances, but the practice of repeatedly voting in  MPs who have a history not just of poor delivery, but also of involvement in the abuse of public office is most morally reprehensible and defeats the entire need to have campaigns and elections. It belongs with the voter to punish the offending MP and as a result show an intolerance for mediocrity, what action will compel future MPs to work harder on the behalf of those they represent.

Cabinet and the Presidency
A situation that is somewhat similar, but the reverse of that in local councils is replicated at the national executive level where a directly elected president must choose from his allies a cabinet that will governs the delivery of government services to the mwananchi. It is not uncommon to hear voters lament the inclusion of politicians in the cabinet that they neither like nor expect to deliver. Many such leaders come with an already tarnished record and the expectations from them are not too high. Still, we cannot claim innocence, as every vote cast in the presidential vote carries an implicit approval of the likely choices that the candidate will make, both in policy terms, and in terms of the team he chooses to govern with him.

It is time that Kenyans understood that in their votes they wield the initial power. If a Kenyan elects to waste his or her vote (or worse still, if such a Kenyan chooses not to vote at all), he or she increases the possibility that the winning choices for civic leaders, council heads, members of parliament, the cabinet and the head of state will be individuals who that Kenyan disapproves of. When subsequent to our choices, or refusal to choose, these civic leaders make by-laws that seem unfair, absurd or even oppressive, when the same leaders make policy decisions that are not in tandem with our vision of the future Kenya or when they engage in treasonous acts of corruption, the only persons to blame are ourselves. Our post-election whine about the leaders that we ourselves put in plac, we are in essence confessing the foolishness of our choices.

Nairobi

Stand and be counted, everywhere
Our extenuations when faced with these charges are legion. Foremost among them is one that begs that the whole candidate pool, is filled with low quality individuals, and that the voter is in essence choosing the best out of a list of devils. This brings us then to what is the ultimate duty of the citizen in a democracy. Stand up and be counted. Our country is doomed to eternal failure if its best and bravest are going to sit back and whinge about the failure of others, in essence abdicating the leadership positions that their talents and abilities have bequeathed to them.

This ‘save us from ourselves' cry runs through most spheres of our lives, and indicates a refusal to take resposnibility for our lives. Recently, some MPs have complained about how farmers in their areas are suffering in the tea sector. Yet the truth is, these farmers elect the directors of their local tea factories. Those directors then get a chance to elect the directors of the KTDA. Ultimately, those directors of KTDA get to appoint persons in management positions at the agency. It is a simple chain and once the farmers get the wrong people to the initial positions, they have themselves set in chain a series of appointments that will come back to burn them. But it is not just at these initial positions that the mwananchi has got the power. They also have mechanisms to correct their mistakes when they discover that a particular official is unfit for office, rather than cry for government intervention.