Kenya’s election reduced to Mt Kenya affair – Senator Kajwang’

Kenya’s Election Reduced to a Mt Kenya Affair — Moses Kajwang Sounds Alarm
Nairobi — In a pointed warning ahead of Kenya’s national 2022 elections, Senator Moses Kajwang of Homa Bay County claimed the contest had been reduced to the votes of the Mount Kenya region, to the exclusion of the rest of the country. According to Kajwang, the intense focus on the region’s 10 counties – which together hold about 5.7 million registered voters – meant other areas with large electorates felt sidelined.
Kajwang’s critique hits at two intertwined dynamics. First, both major electoral coalitions in 2022 – Kenya Kwanza Alliance and Azimio La Umoja Coalition – made strategic overtures to the Mount Kenya region by selecting running-mates from among its counties, implicitly acknowledging its king-maker status.
Second, when compared with the Rift Valley region’s 5.3 million voters, the Mount Kenya bloc was seen as a crucial electoral prize, reshaping campaign strategies.
Kajwang argued that this heavy emphasis produced a skewed political focus, where other parts of this country seemed less relevant to the national conversation.
The reaction to Kajwang’s remarks underlines growing unease about regional imbalances in Kenya’s political architecture. For voters outside the Mount Kenya region, the perception that political elites are fixated on a single vote bank stirs resentment and reinforces feelings of marginalisation. The implication is that national leadership contests are no longer perceived strictly as a contest of ideas across the whole country, but rather as a high-stakes scramble for the Mount Kenya stamp of approval. Looking ahead to future elections, if this pattern persists it raises deeper questions about the inclusivity and fairness of Kenya’s democratic process — and whether all regions feel equally engaged in the race for the presidency.