Gaslighting 101: Why June 25 could be defining moment in 2027 election

June 25, 2027 will be 46 days to our next election. It will be 15 days after the 2027/28 Budget Statement has been read on Thursday 10 June, if not earlier; maybe eight days after the 2027 Finance Bill has been passed, or not passed, depending on the pre-election courage of our MPs. You can see how this third commemoration of 2024 is the perfect “tosha” launch pad at which Ruto’s unified opposer is announced. Nice elections run on these zeitgeist-like “unbwogable” moments.

You can also see how Raila’s ODM to UDA broad-based 10-point agenda is the real manifesto. To repeat, while other have ideas, Raila was an idea. Even in his absence, he will decide 2027.  The pure irony in all of this is Ruto was, at least in 2007, one of his loudest foot soldiers. The test for Kenyans 20 years later is if we continue with this regime or we try another one.

I still insist that Kenya needs a “governator” (good governance and rule of law) at the top, after the securocrats, outside of our Kibaki econocrat, we have experienced.  But I have modified my view – a governator at the top, an econocrat as deputy. That’s our basic “constitutionalism” ask.

Of course, on this lovely Sunday, we still have 408 days to make our voting choices, which is plenty of time for Ruto to solidify his “tutam” agenda as the other people run on “wantam”.  It is terribly amusing how the Kenya Kwanza administration fails to turn “tutam” into a credible message.  It all looks panicky, reactionary and mostly, abusive. Emotional (Un)Intelligence 101?

The “wantam” guys aren’t impressing either, but you can see their point, the “who” is the “what”. This is where we miss Moi’s “what is whom” (in my view our cleverest politician ever, though Ruto with sense isn’t far behind – this is a Messi-Ronaldo GOAT discussion so let’s leave it there).

Which brings us back to June 25, 2026.  Let’s not even talk about Ruto’s crazy social media messaging against The Standard’s bold journalism, a bigger own goal than any we have seen in the ongoing men’s footie World Cup. The response from other media houses exposes the amateurism in this distraction from a day when, mostly, parents wanted to celebrate their brave children, sadly departed. When I wrote about the events of 2024 in Finance Bill context, I was in tears, listening on X spaces to voices of Gen Y (millennial) and Gen Z kids as a Gen X parent.

The kids, our kids, were talking about friends, relatives, colleagues they lost to official police brutality.  I cannot explain in this piece the cries of one Gen Z who wished the end of our leaders.  But I can see this Kenya Kwanza administration’s security response this time to a justice problem.

When IPOA says that only three death cases are in court, from an official tally over 100 and an unofficial one that’s four to five times that, we are in a space called official inhumanity, not just impunity.  The short story here is our criminal justice system doesn’t work by political design.  These are the embers that flame the discord we now have in a combo of protest and goonism.

To be clear, peace is not the absence of war, or violence, but the presence of justice. So, what did we get last Thursday (June 25)?  Advanced surveillance (NIS drones over Nairobi) and a super-fancy boombox/loudspeaker called LRAD from the police plus the paramilitary (GSU) not normal (ndio, afande) crew. That’s getting to Sh200 billion of our taxes when the justice system (Judiciary plus accountability institutions) isn’t a third of that.  Welcome to “Singapoor” not Singapore. The official KPI (key performance indicator) was 355 people were arrested. Cry, my beloved Kenya!

The real irony is we closed down the economy to protect the economy. And the fundamental essence of protests, even this commemoration, is the self-same economy! This is the wild logic that gets capital markets and citizens wondering what we are really up to having seen at least Sh10-15 billion in GDP lost with closed shops and factories, and slowed transport.

There was no 99 per cent of our Sh48 billion a day economy working on Thursday.  And that’s this administration’s real own goal.  Basic number crunching tells us transport, manufacturing, food/accom and construction suffered, while agriculture locked down and financial services went off/on line.  The real answer to protest moments is economic (country) and fiscal (government).

And the reality is that over half of our 20 economic sectors are affected by protest movements.  Interestingly, this half is the “bottom-up” sectors that create jobs, but we love crony capital, right?

Indeed, the next-level gaslighting we got from officials could launch our own rocket to the moon.

In truth, the other irony is that these protests have negative bottom-up not top-down effects for an administration that sold Kenyans the “hustlers” versus “dynasties” mantra before their “forced contributions” experiment. The 2027 script isn’t written, it is already writing itself very quickly. 

Allowing protests hurts the bottom more than the top, but so does preventing them. The real problem here is the answer to our economic problem is seen by leaders as ham-fisted security.

Here’s an advance view of the 2027 script.  Justice is a prerequisite for peace. Justice is the balance between security and rights. Drones and guns don’t help.  Neither to closed roads and barricades, running against court orders for a government selling our investor-friendly, rule of law-abiding environment.  It is easy to suspect that the only intel we had was diplomatic advisories.

Own-goal specialists

But it’s more than this. Every government, or the wider state, has the monopoly of violence. However, fear in Kenya is now a fast-depreciating asset. Security means nothing without economic velocity. Then, importantly, private sector has an exit button. One would think that national leadership must encourage, not police, the economy. But we are own-goal specialists.

And the justice baseline we need to get to a lasting peace creates the latter’s balance between progress and prosperity. Visualize that and you begin to understand what our Katiba commands.

Peace for prosperity and progress underpinned by the justice balance between security and rights.  It is possible to translate this into a clear formulaic expression, but that’s for the officials to figure.

Actually, there’s no need to run numbers, or, importantly, run wrong, distractive and diversionary numbers as is government’s wont.  2027 might decide if Kenya is numbers or people.  June 25 suggests it’s people, right?  We have an “own goal” moment, but I like the World Cup ones more.