Why aspirants, supporters must up their game
Politics, they say, is about perception and capturing the aspirations and imagination of the electorate.
For serious and agile candidates, it is about making the critical issues in an election, the very issues that when discoursed would prime and frame them in a fashion, that would translate the imaginations and perception the masses hold into votes.
Therefore, when critics push the two-horse narrative, it is because only two candidates in the run up to the August 2022 elections have created nationwide perception and captured the imagination of Kenyans.
Kenyans are talking about the William Ruto Bottom-Up economic model and Azimio La Umoja, which the Raila Odinga axis conceptualised a few months ago.
Kalonzo Musyoka has asserted that it will not be a two horse race because he is going to be on the ballot. Hopefully, he will also coin a formation to capture the aspirations of Kenyans.
You can’t rule out the emergence of a third horse, because the key in capturing the imagination of the voters is about timing; and probably there is still time.
The hustler nation for instance, pull many Kenyans to rallies through their bottom up model, but it does seem that they have to take it to the next level, of concretely making the elections about the hustlers and the economy without evoking the us verses them narrative. That is now the crux and if they don’t hack it they will stutter.
Azimio La Umoja seems to be selling something that Kenyans understand is urgent in our politics, but the blue wave needs to take off with pomp. Otherwise it will all hit a saturation level.
Political rallies and public sloganeering will only create perceptions and big rallies will create the impression of winning, but we understand how Kenyans vote. Ethnic considerations are at the core and even our mobilisation is along ethnic lines.
Therefore, both Azimio La Umoja and Bottom-Up model are quite refreshing. Refreshing because in a very long time we have two formations, that seem to speak to issues that bring all Kenyans on the table. The economy and unity of Kenyans transcend tribe and class.
Logically the issue both sides Azimio team and the hustler nation are grappling with is how to convince Kenyans both at the rallies and the ones following via mediated communication , to vote for them.
They both certainly need to scale it down to conversations at personal, group and community level. The emergence of the digital media has made it easy for these formations to create a community of opinion leaders and conversation shapers, to unpack these two models and win voters.
Data from social media platforms, including the more pervasive like WhatsApp and Telegram, speak of supporters of either Azimio or the hustler nation who do nothing other than continue sharing the same perception created in the public mass media.
You see, once we have interacted with some of these political big shots in the public mass media and what they stand for, we expect to have a contextualised understanding of their agenda from the folks who are supporting them.
These folks cannot descend to the personal mass media spaces like WhatsApp, Telegram and microblogging sites like Twitter and regurgitate the same at best or get abusive when engaged by the very guys they should be winning as voters.
The most effective voter contact is direct; because it provides a platform for having conversations that would win voters to either Azimio or the Bottom-Up economic model.
Foot soldiers and folks who are already in either of these formations, need to do this electioneering period a big favour and engage, unpack, discourse and convince they people they encounter on the digital platforms why we should vote for Azimio or the Bottom-Up economic model.
