I consider myself a responsible and fully-paid up member of my society. I participate in the PTA at my daughter's school, and I am involved in the neighborhood council.

We do not do anything too exciting in our council; it's only putting together the funds for the refuse collection, and that for the neighborhood guards. We also put money together for the resurfacing of the road that passes through our little enclave.

It is an enclave alright, and we are its little government. We have blocked the two entrances to our road by putting up a ten-foot wall on the one-end, with electric fencing at the top; and we have a massive gate (again with electric fencing on top) at the other end. At the gate we have two guards, ex-policemen who are under instruction not to let anyone come uninvited into our little piece of calm and tranquility. We have long given up on the ability of the local government and the central government to deliver the services we should properly expect from our taxes.

A place to call our own

There are twenty smaller gates here in Baring Drive -we have made it a Close now, but who is telling the Council,? Not us. At the extreme end, by the wall is a little estate. There are six houses in that last compound. Six houses and the day care centre. That is another one of our community duties. We send the children there when we are not at work, or when we are having our meetings. They have a teacher there, and they make a nice little bunch, learning to play their musical instruments, reading or just playing their electronic games. It's safe here, and for those of us who don't want to send their children off to boarding school, a welcome option.

So you see we are a government, we have our little laws, and we collect our little taxes levied for the payments for the security, the teacher, the rent on the day-care, our infrastructure (the wall, the road and the gate).

Over the wall and to the south of the city I can hear the whistles and the hooting, and the shouts. They are punctuated every so often by a loud voice over the speakers, and the cheering and songs, even a few war-cries. Marcus Onyango- the guard at our gate is talking politics all the time now, and it's all over the news and on the internet. I found him standing at the kitchen door imploring Nelima on the need to vote ODM and free the poor from oppression. Our precocious Iman has also taken to reading the newspaper, and asking a million and one questions. I try my best to answer, but like him there's so much I do not know. I am very angry, and feeling a little desperate. I will not be voting this time.

I did not vote in 2002 either. I was away at university, but I would have arrived at the same decision. I know, this is supposed to be my fundamental duty as a citizen, you keep hearing about it. All over the place there's talk of the importance of our votes, how much they count and how we can make a difference by voting, and how by not voting we deserve the poor government that comes into office. I even saw that Reddykyulass are now on a get-the-vote-out drive, spending millions in donor funds on concerts and comedy shows.

I have been called a coward; and most bizarrely every single time I criticize the main candidates; I am asked very aggressively,' Who then do you want to vote for?'

I want to vote for someone, I really want to participate in this ritual we hold so dear,but I cannot. It would be irresponsible to lend my approval to a leader who I rightly despise, or one who has shown he has neither the interest nor the intellect for government.

So as we get carried away, and are taken hurtling towards the vicious rapids and the waterfalls by the euphoria, here is why I will not vote.

In a democracy, both voting and not voting are rights. A right is a freedom, a choice. It cannot be imposed. There is an interest on both sides, and especially on the part of the opposition to present themselves in a Messianic light, as redeemers of the nation. So it is promulgated that all people of justice and morality should side with the ODM. The PNU and its horde on their part, also ask that we do not abdicate our right to vote, because in doing so we may let in a greater evil.

I refuse to be blackmailed; my not voting is a positive action. I am not sitting back doing nothing, I am not disinterested in politics, mine is not a position of apathy, it is a rejection of both the candidates. It is a sign that I am not pleased with either party's platform and that I do not believe that either one of them can deliver anything nearly worth the effort of my getting out of my house on Election Day.

To understand my stubborn attitude, we need perhaps to return to first principles. Why do democratic institutions have provisions for voting at all? It is simply because they they are the best way of gauging what is best for the whole, for their membership to decide which of the different candidates and ideas they prefer. So individual choices are added up and a solution is found that represents an aggregate of what each member desires. What does one do then, when the parties have no ideas? And when the candidates show no talent for leadership of a government or the capacity to bring people together in the pursuit of something more meaningful than an endless game of musical chairs? What then when each one is a bigger crook or non-achiever than the last? Choose the best among the worst they say. What nonsense! To exercise a choice among candidates and parties, there must first exist a choice. But when each one is as bad as the other, the choice is transformed into compulsion and the only real choice then is between "not voting" and voting. It is much like needing to get a ride home on a cold and rainy night. Two taxis come up to you and ask for a fare that is ten times what it ought to be, the drivers are looking dangerous and they leer at you as you haggle with them. Will you still choose? Is it not better to choose to abstain?

Let's look through the wares on offer.

ODM

ODM: A congregation of carpetbaggers whose main campaign theme is reform. The savvy voter- if such existed- would ask,' reform from what, and to what?' Has at its head a body called the Pentagon- (p.s. there's a Hilton hotel in Sotik that measures 6' X 12') membership of which is restricted to those who vied for the party's presidential candidacy. Generally speaking, its a motley crew of crooks and tribalists, with a healthy helping of opportunists hanging on to their coat-tails. When they are not plotting to kick the Old Guard and the Agikuyu out of State House, its leaders have a feel of fish out of water. They employ a fantastically weak grasp on reality, including selling the fatuous suggestion that the Olympics will be brought to Kenya (Olympics to a country?) and that they will expand the economy by 20%!! The party tolerates a bizarre presidential candidate who thinks he is the Messiah. Brilliant at politicking and raising large crowds, this is the party of the masses. In the mind of the Kenyan public, its membership comprising former Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and Parastatal crooks is deemed reformist.

PNU

PNU: A brand new contraption, employing as its only raison d'etre the re-election of the President. Nothing else seems to hold this group together. Like the ODM it really is a hotchpotch, employing in its ranks the untalent of the new KANU party, and the sympathies of every old man in Kenya except former attorney-general Charles Njonjo-who is in love with the ODM candidate. The party has even managed to capture the support of former President Daniel Moi. It rivals the ODM in its who's who of Kenya's most corrupt; edging the ODM out in these stakes perhaps on account of the length of time the public cookie jar has been available to them. In our obsession with the office of the president, this is the party carrying the curse of the failures of the past five years. That president on his part, is alleged to spend three quarters of the day asleep, and has shown few signs of managing his shaky coalition.

ODM-K

ODM-K: Splinter group from the ODM congregation, or is the ODM a splinter group of this one? On the surface this is the cleanest of the parties, but it has kept itself to the Akamba regions and in our tribal politics has no chance of winning. Of the traditional big-wigs, only Kalonzo Musyoka and Julia Ojiambo have national prominence of any sort.

As ridiculous as the parties seem on first glance, they do have promises. A million and one of them, the majority self-contradictory or otherwise potentially ruinous to the economy and our fragile political structure. The unfortunate problem is that dishonesty for politicians begins with the election campaign process itself. Let's leave out the silly promises which they know they cannot keep, but which they must proclaim cynically taking advantage of voter gullibility. Let's talk about the money. The politicians need to raise money for all the spending in campaign season. This money itself creates a problem, because it will have come from a combination of personal funds, well-wishers and donations. Donations from individuals, groups and companies imply a quid pro quo sometime in the future. Somewhere, sometime, the politicians will have to scratch a back. So the voter is in effect permitting the theft and abuse of public resources when he endorses a sub-standard candidate, knowing full well before the election just what the politician is likely to do when in office.

In the particular case of this election, we have first hand experiences of what both a Mwai Kibaki and a Raila Odinga government would mean. We know the allegations of corruption that dangle over both men's heads and simultaenously tie their hands in the war on graft. We know that both men have gained fabulous wealth by milking public office for all they could get from it. We know that they have dealings with a murky world behind the shadows that we are not familiar with. We have also seen Odinga's running mate in court, as have we his candidate for the premiership. On Kibaki's part we are aware of the company that he keeps, and their history of grievious harm on this country. We know full well the oppressive tendencies of both parties, and their intolerance towards dissenters. We know that both men are captured by their ethnic groups and that the rest is a blurr to them.

Let us for a moment assume, that as politicians the world over are similar, this level of dishonesty and corruption is acceptable. Let us imagine that those sullied CVs are so common as to be acceptable in politics. Popular wisdom after all is, politics is a dirty game, and "so what if he is corrupt (which everyone is anyway), at least he is efficient and the work gets done". But, even that does not happen. There is a marked lack of accountability and transparency in the functioning of our politicians. They rarely if ever show any positive performance. 

Like Kibaki before him, we have had more than enough opportunity to measure up Raila Odinga, both in his capacity as a Minister, as a political party official and as the de facto head of a party that wholly controlled local government councils across large parts of a province. Mwai Kibaki's failure to launch when in government in the 1980s betrayed a similar lack of potential when president. Similarly, for all the talk of reform, the MP for Langata can hardly be expected to turn on a switch that has refused to light up all these years.

Don't we exercise our right to "not choose" among available options on other less important things when they don't measure up to our standards? Clothes, spouses, cars, houses and careers, and so on, do we simply take it because that is all that is available at the shop? In the same vein, do we really have to vote when there is no choice?

I know I am not ashamed that I will not have an ink-stained thumb on the day after the election; and even more a guilty conscience for endorsing a government that I know is set-up by its very nature to fail.