Lilian L. Luvugaツ

@EdwinSifuna's argument is different. - A President isn't supposed to know everything... - That is why a Republic has Cabinet Secretaries. - Principal Secretaries. - Engineers. - Economists. - Doctors. - Teachers. - Civil servants. - Parliament. - Courts. - Independent institutions. The Country should not depend on the genius of one man. - It should depend on institutions that work. 📍And that leads to perhaps the most interesting argument I have heard him make. - ✓ No President takes an oath to build a road. - ✓ Or a market. - ✓ Or a stadium. The Presidential oath is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. - That doesn't mean roads don't matter. - It means something much bigger. 𝐑𝐨𝐚𝐝𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 G𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬. - Hospitals should work because the health system works. - Children should learn because the education system works. - Opportunities should exist because the economy works. - Citizens should not require Presidential benevolence to receive ordinary Government. 📍And perhaps this is where Sifuna becomes more interesting to me than simply another opposition candidate. - He may be beginning to articulate a different idea of the Presidency itself. Less 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫. More 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜. But there is still a very long road between political possibility and State House. - Sifuna must build an organization. - He must withstand money. - He must survive success. - He must prevent yesterday's political opportunists from capturing tomorrow's movement. And most importantly, he must turn something incredibly fragile—affection—into machinery. - ✓ Likability must become identification. - ✓ Identification must become organisation. - Organisation must become registration. - Registration must become turnout. - And turnout must become protected votes. That is the test. - I sometimes think about those two conversations I had in 2022. - Perhaps my sibling and my friend were right to dismiss me. - Because if either of them had asked me exactly what I saw in Edwin Sifuna then, I'm not sure I could have explained it. - I can now. - I wasn't looking at a finished politician. - I wasn't even looking at a Presidential candidate. I think I was watching political gravity beginning to form. 📍Four years later, things are beginning to fall towards it. - And I am still watching.

✍🏾 Wrote George Arungah: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐎𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐃𝐍'𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 - Sometime in 2022, I noticed something about @EdwinSifuna. - I mentioned it to one of my siblings. - I was dismissed. - I tried again with someone I was dating at the time. - Nothing. 😂 So I stopped talking about it. - But I didn't stop watching him. - For four years, I watched. - ✓ The interviews. - ✓ The fights. - ✓ The pressure. - ✓ The insults. - ✓ The moments when responding would have been easy—and the moments when silence required considerably more discipline. 📍I watched him inside ODM. - I watched his relationship with Raila. - I watched him defend the party. - I watched him disagree with it. - I watched what happened when the ground beneath him eventually shifted. 📍And then, after ODM pushed him out, something extraordinary happened. - The politician I had been quietly watching for four years suddenly became impossible for the Country not to watch. In a remarkably short period, Sifuna has moved from being dismissed by many as merely a loud, clever ODM Secretary General to becoming one of the central questions of 2027. - And I don't think we fully understand why. - It isn't simply because he speaks well. - Kenya has eloquent politicians. - It isn't because he opposes William Ruto. - We certainly don't have a shortage of those.😂 - And it isn't simply intelligence. There is something else happening around Sifuna. - Something money can imitate, but cannot easily manufacture. 𝗣EOPLE LIKE HIM. - That sounds almost trivial. - It isn't. Politics is one of those strange businesses where people spend billions trying to manufacture something that sometimes arrives naturally in another human being. - You can buy billboards. - You can print T-shirts. - You can hire mobilizers. - You can ferry thousands of people into a field and produce a magnificent aerial photograph. 📍But there is another kind of crowd. - The person who spends their own money getting there. - The young Kenyan who makes the TikTok nobody commissioned. - The woman defending you in a WhatsApp group. - The stranger arguing your case on Facebook. - The person who brings three friends. - The person who registers because you have made politics matter to them. - The volunteer who eventually wakes up at 04:00 a.m. to protect your vote. That person hasn't merely attended your campaign. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐬𝐲𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐭. 📍And when enough people begin doing that, something changes. - The politician is no longer doing all the persuading. - People begin persuading each other. - I think that is beginning to happen around Sifuna. - But if likability were all I had seen, I would have stopped watching years ago. - What has kept me interested is what sits underneath it. 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞. The recent rumoured fallout with Babu Owino was instructive. - It contained every ingredient Kenyan politics needs for a spectacular public divorce. - Two ambitious young politicians. - Supporters spoiling for a fight. - Bloggers waiting. Cameras ready. Sifuna refused to play. - No angry press conference. - No public retaliation. - No scorched earth. - ✓ His supporters largely answered for him. Sifuna, meanwhile, extended an olive branch. - That fascinated me. - Because it is easy to look Presidential when everybody is applauding you. - Temperament becomes much more interesting when somebody gives you an opportunity to be petty. 📍Then there is something else I have increasingly come to appreciate. - Sifuna is comfortable saying: - 𝑰 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘. In Kenyan Presidential politics, that almost sounds revolutionary. 😂 We have built this peculiar idea of the President as national engineer, economist, doctor, contractor, employment officer and development expert rolled into one.