This debate should've had all candidates on one stage. The existing segregation soils (the) already expanded democratic engagement space and overtly creates unnecessary hierarchies. - Scheaffor Okore, via her Twitter account.

Scheaffer spoke for many Kenyans who wish to see all political candidates debating each other on the same floor. According to the Head of the Presidential Debates Secretariat Clifford Machoka, they expect over 40 Million eyeballs in the presidential debates. The debate will be streamed across more than 450 radio and TV stations including digital platforms. This is a platform that offers candidates a space to respond to the same issues, and they are given the same amount of time to respond. It is the perfect meeting point for the candidates, the media and the public. 

This is especially so given the cloudy and often suffocating environment that has informed the Kenyan political space over the past four years. The country has virtually been in campaign mode, without any clear sense of focus on what is on offer to the electorate, beyond vague generalities and innuendo. In the place of public discourse there has been public diatribe, and in the place of rational exposition of ideas raw emotion, sometimes of an incendiary nature. The debates, therefore, should give the voter – and especially the undecided one – the opportunity to place the two foremost candidates on the scales and to decide whom to vote for.

It is therefore paramount that we allow all candidates to speak from the same space and to engage each other at the same time.

We petition the relevant duty bearers and decision-makers to reconsider the current debate model that has tier one and tier two candidates, tied to a percentage outcome of below or above five percent. A model that creates false hierarchies and continues to entrench a 2 horse race narrative while blacking out alternative candidates.