It is possible to campaign and hold elections peacefully

Opposition leaders led by Kalonzo Musyoka and Rigathi Gachagua (DCP) address locals in Voi, Taita Taveta county.[@rigathi, X]

Over the past month, I have received three separate cancellations from visitors planning to attend conferences scheduled for “summer” next year, typically June to September.

The reason for these cancellations is singular and telling: The upcoming general election  in August next year. It is unpredictable, and the world is already taking notice of our cyclical anxiety.

We have built a reputation of sorts during  general elections, and it is a sobering reflection on our national maturity.

Our political behaviour has simply not matured. Instead of treating elections as a normal democratic test of ideas, we invest emotions, ethnicity, greed, rigging, blackmail, and anything that destroys civilised voter behaviour.

Worse, we lose lives every election cycle. Some people end up with lifelong injuries, while others lose hard-earned property. Ultimately, we emerge from each election as a deeply polarised country.

What bothers me, and I believe many other Kenyans as well, is that we do not seem to learn from our past elections.

We treat each other very badly during campaigns. We barricade roads and hurl unprintable insults at each other in public, behaving as if we have suspended our reasoning faculties entirely.

When we listen to the culprits speaking in political forums, we cannot but conclude that political players are thick-skinned to learn anything.

But let us be honest: This is pure hypocrisy. We are all human, and we have a conscience that tells us when we are plotting violence.

Hiring goons to attack other human beings is a very primitive behaviour, and it is an act of servitude to selfish interests. Can any of those violence planners ever put their own relatives on the road as goons? Of course not.

I often wonder how to pass the message to aspirants for elective positions that it is entirely possible to run a campaign without harming others.

After all, it is not impossible for competitors to agree that no matter the strategies they employ, violence should not be one of them.

Our violent voter behavior, patronised by political gods, sends the wrong signals to our international partners and actively destroys the moral values of our young people.

When the Gen Z movement recently rose to demand better services and accountability, we descended on them and ran them out of town.

 In doing so, they learned a painful lesson: That in Kenya, dialogue is used merely as a conflict resolution mechanism after chaos erupts, rather than as a conflict prevention tool beforehand. Now, the younger Alpha generation is watching how adults are cheering and defending violent acts. How do we tell them in the future that dialogue actually works in political spaces?

Furthermore, with youth unemployment acting as a ticking time bomb waiting for a trigger, we should not approach next year’s general election with mobilised youths serving as private security or enforcement agents for aspirants.

We have to remain human to each other. The recent media clips showing mobilised youths descending upon one another do not depict the kind of Kenya anyone wants to see.

Young people are extremely vulnerable precisely because they have no jobs; using our wealth to hire them for the dirty activities of lawlessness is deeply heartless.

Let us throw in a curse here: People who use young people as a means to their end, and violent means in this case, will bring a curse upon their families down the generations.

Let us be honest with ourselves. Our international reputation for violence during general elections is horrible. We lose business, we lose character, we lose faith, and we lose time. But for what ultimate benefit?

Yes, we have law enforcers, particularly uniformed officers, to protect us from 'goonism' and violent conduct.

However, we must not abuse our freedoms to campaign by starting to stretch the police thin. Our security ought to begin with how those aspiring for positions conduct themselves.

Let us not find it very easy to push security agencies into political intolerance.

The imperative before us is not merely to anticipate and manage post-election chaos, but to summon the moral courage to prevent violence before the first ballot is cast.