Good people are positioned as not being ideal candidates for political office.
This is purely because the political culture has normalised politics as a “dirty game”. This implies that only those who can “play dirty” are fit to lead.
Most have scandalous histories, questionable wealth, pending court cases, murder charges and decay attached to their character.
To understand where the societal conditioning that “bad” people are best suited for competitive politics comes from, we must understand the culture of politics.
The organised control over a human community, particularly a state, is roughly what politics is and this particular control has been associated with chaos, violence and even murder.
Politics has been a game of lawlessness where everything goes unpunished. In fact, in Kenya, the most admired leaders are those who defeat the justice system and never get caught.
Hence, potential political players who come in seeking law and order are automatic outsiders.
Politics is laced with abusive and abrasive language, derogatory demeanour, zero civility, deceit and publicly accepted bad mannerisms.
This is due to several factors, but the main one is that bad leaders have been allowed to continue bastardising politics.
Another reason bad manners flourish as political culture is the lack of independence of systems like the media, state and non-state institutions and gatekeeping public intellectuals.
Lastly, people are a big part of the solution in changing the narrative on political culture. However, mentally captive people who believe a leader who isn’t macho is not worth leading is also a big problem.
Redefining political culture is therefore not a single person’s or institution’s responsibility but a collective agenda.
Which means institutions with the power to reach millions of people like media houses must task themselves with this responsibility.
They must endeavour to move away from affirming old thinking and framing of political culture.
They must begin to use language differently and clean up the undertones of machoism in their political debates, coverage and reporting.
We can’t keep hearing comments like, “But you’re too good for politics”, which insinuate that politics is not for good people.
They must set the stage for the public to understand the importance of a cultural shift from the current political murk to an imaginative political culture.
Demonstrating what is acceptable and what isn’t as our political culture is the work of anyone seeking change. And just like the media have their role, so does everyone else.
Public intellectuals have the responsibility to expand the public discourse space by ensuring equal representation of different ideas.
This way, we get to think, hear and learn outside our comfort zones and class bubbles.
Kenyans also need to reject the notion that a good person cannot lead them just because a few good people tried and failed.
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