YVONNE'S TAKE: November 27th to 2027

Not the kind that comes from bad weather, but the kind that comes from bad politics.

Kenya has entered a strange season, a season of permanent campaigning. And I don’t mean because of the upcoming by-elections.

I mean everywhere you turn, leadership is on the stump: in churches, in markets, at funerals, at roadside stops. There seems to be no gathering too small, no moment too sacred, no community too weary to be pulled into yet another political performance.

We have a President who thinks nothing of climbing onto the roof of his car to shout “two term” to a crowd buying tomatoes. A Head of State who casually tells Kenyans that unnamed others “hawana akili,” that they have no brains. Words spoken lightly from a microphone, but felt heavily in a country already fraying at the edges.

And in Mbeere, a simple by-election has morphed into a showdown between a former deputy president and the current one, each fighting to crown himself “king of the mountain” over a parliamentary seat. A seat whose biggest problem should be water, roads, or youth unemployment, not national ego contests and power projections.

So I find myself asking: what are we doing? What is this? And how is any of it good for a country that is already struggling to breathe?

Because politics does not exist in a vacuum.

It sets the tone.

And the tone we have now, the noise, the chest-thumping, the insults, filters into the national mood, and from there into the economy.

Every economist will tell you: markets run on confidence, on stability, on predictability.

But when leaders behave like candidates instead of statesmen, when every weekend is a rally, when every microphone is a chance to attack opponents instead of addressing policy, when governance feels like theatre, what message are we sending to the country, to business owners, to investors, to ordinary Kenyans wondering how to plan their next month, their next loan, their next school fee payment?

Politics creates the emotional climate of a nation. And right now, that climate feels hot, unsettled, and unpredictable.

You can feel it in conversations in matatus. You can hear it in boardrooms. You can see it in the slow pace of new investments. You can sense it in families who are anxious, tired, and unsure.

Because when a country is in campaign mode, it cannot be in governance mode. And when leaders treat every day like a political rally, the country absorbs that instability. It becomes jittery, reactive, suspicious, divided.

Social cohesion suffers. The economy strains. The national psyche tires.

This is not about being sentimental. It is about being honest. A nation cannot stay in permanent agitation and expect its economy to grow. It cannot shout its way into unity. It cannot heckle its way into stability.

Kenya needs calm. It needs sobriety. It needs leadership that lowers the temperature instead of raising it for political applause.

We deserve a country that gets to breathe. A country where leaders are busy governing, not performing. A country where politics knows its place, and stays in it.

Until then, the noise will continue. But so will the fatigue. And ultimately, so will the cost, paid not by politicians on car rooftops, but by ordinary Kenyans on the ground.