Kenyans have had their collective attention ensnared by the news of what the political parties in the country claimed were nominations for candidates to contest the various elective posts in the General Election constitutionally scheduled for August 8, 2017.

The disorder in the primary elections leaves one wondering whether the August elections are what would be called a snap election — that is, an election triggered by a previously unforeseen occurrence. In Britain, for instance, the date of the General Election is not fixed by law.

The prime minister may at any time trigger a General Election by announcing a date and with the approval of the House of Commons get an election held within eight weeks. This is why Britain will hold a snap General Election on June 8, 2017, following an announcement by Prime Minister Theresa May after Easter, with approval by the House of Commons.

In other words, other than the premier, all other politicians (bar members of her Cabinet and a few close associates), the parties had a lead time of only eight weeks before the next General Election. Yet, this ambush, if you choose to see it that way, will not be a source of anxiety or dysfunction in Britain.

Lack of institutional muscle

On the other hand, Kenya has a Constitution that fixes the date of elections. It states that elections shall be held on the second Tuesday of each fifth year from the last elections. From the date of the last elections of March 2013, anyone could plot the dates of elections for the rest of this century, if the Constitution remains unchanged. Yet, the confusion seen in the party nominations that we have witnessed over the past fortnight gives the impression that the election dates were a surprise for the parties.

In most parts of Kenya, even the scheduled party primaries failed to take off within the timelines that the parties had set themselves. Voters had been told that polling stations would be open at 6am but there is hardly anywhere that voting began on time, with the media reporting instances where voting began six hours late.

In some cases, voting had to be postponed and rescheduled — even in constituencies hardly 10km outside the capital and parties’ headquarters. Some of the reasons cited were delays in delivery of ballot papers to polling stations, coupled the inability by parties to decide whether voters should use party membership cards or national identity cards.

This level of confusion has some poignant lessons for the honest: that while the associations we call parties in Kenya are required by the Constitution to be national outfits, they really are just clubs of ethnic elites in Nairobi. They have no institutional muscle to undertake any serious business outside the party headquarters, bar political rallies.

The institutional failure of these “clubs” shows itself in the fact that they cannot hold credible nominations and that even top party officials ditch them after losing at the primaries and seek to run as independents citing election rigging. This issue of defections also exposes the political parties for the shallow vehicles they are.

There is a persistent claim in Kenya’s discourses of political parties as being bedrocks of certain ideologies that analysts perpetually cite. Yet no one talks of ideologies when national party officials abandon their own.

The reason for this is all too obvious. It is the pervasive belief in Machiavellian thinking. The ethnic supermen who have control of the outfits we call political parties have been somehow persuaded, and this is a belief shared by most of the voters, that institutional and social change is a top-down endeavour.

The thinking goes that you need this all-knowing philosopher king or prince to direct things from wherever he is and everyone will fall in line and accomplish his wishes. Well, the past fortnight told a different story in that it is good for the party owner since he gets his desired candidates but less so for the party’s claim to being democratic.

The other observation about this is that the central if not outright centrepiece of the elections strategy for most parties, is the so-called strategic communications stance. That one should be ready to explain away everything from a podium in Nairobi, and that will be the salve to all the problems created by fraudulent contestants in a village 20km away.

The second disturbing observation is that Kenyans learn nothing from the past. It is clear to all that the party primaries have been getting more raucous and disorganised with each election season. However, there seems to be consensus in the national psyche that politics being a dirty game, it is alright, and that the election season is a time for all or nothing and some lives must be lost and property destroyed just to determine who should represent the respective parties in the general election.

This should lead to the emerging phenomenon of the independent candidates. The rise in the number of persons who are seeking elective offices as independents is the ultimate proof of to the fact that parties are just talking shops for politicians in the capital.

Sekou Owino is Nation Media Group’s head of legal services.