What I would have loved to see here is an intelligent comparison of the two systems.

I am thinking Hongkong with its 1600-member election commitee that chooses the chief executive. And India which offers the perfect case study of universal suffrage at work.

Hongkong ticks all the right boxes of human aspirations, India, well.... The less said the better.

I strongly feel if you put together simon gicharu, vimal shah, delmonte boss, a representative from njenga karume family and Dr.patrick Njoroge. These five men can get you a better governor for kiambu county than the voters ever will.

@FRM2011 - Democracy is not a prerequisite to modernity, freedom or even prosperity. Democracy is about THE VOICE!! Democracy is actually to me a dispute resolution mechanism. a way to share the cake so to speak. a way to NOT GO TO WAR! not a way to prosper. SA was prosperous for years and it was far from being democratic. Private companies are some of the most prosperous creations of human beings - they don't waste, they ensure that they get everything from their workers e.t.c. but representation is not that way.
@Swenani - I think i have said it over and over and over again here... your voice is yours. so this is how the process goes... a random kenyan gets to 18 years old we say.. hey... this guy is now a "grown up". we give him/her an ID we tell them... "if you screw up - we will throw you in the slammer", "you can go and work anywhere in the country", "you can marry whomever you want (and wants you back)"" and "YOU CAN VOTE!".
To me Voting is a choice as sacred as marriage... YOU GET TO DECIDE WHAT'S BEST FOR YOU! you don't marry to get rich.. (ok not all of us), you don't marry to be modern... YOU MARRY BECAUSE YOU WANT TO GET MARRIED. You decide who you want to marry and that is your choice. We can make fun of your choice (right to speech does not guarantee the right to be taken seriously)... but it's your choice. If we don't want a person to marry because of money WE EDUCATE THEM. We show them an unhappy couple that did something that silly... we don't say.. hey... you won't marry... until we decide that you are marrying the right person... The right to bear children as well... We educate them and tell them... well if you decide to have 10 kids and is as dry as a bone and ask - do you want to be like that? Then let them be! WHO THE HELL DO WE THINK WE ARE TO DECIDE FOR A GROWNUP? A PERSON WHO FEEDS THEMSELVES, HAS A CHOICE TO MARRY AND EVEN DECIDE THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN THEY WANT?
you educate them and after doing that they decide on their own. Everyone has a story and thus the feedback loop I have been taking about... Going to school does not mean educated - it means literacy! education is experiences... experiences can only come when people are dipped in certain contexts. No textbook will drive ethnicity out of you... it's context that does that. You see something and say.. Huh!... it makes you think! So where I differ with most of you is the shortcut! We say - hey we have a bunch of persons who have only vegetated in their communes for years and believe luos cook in the basins they bathe in. These guys are "educated" since they went to dedan kimathi primary, dedan kimathi secondary and dedan kimathi university. they have never been outside dedan kimathi zone so all the narratives they know are narratives given to them since they were young... the brain is a creature of repeatition. so if you don't want people to make tribal decisions - dip them in contexts that make them question their preaffirmed positions. They think... Huh!! which luos are these I was being told about then? and slowly we have a better society... Democracy works with an EDUCATED AND PREFERABLY LITERATE society tuwache shortcuts!

Kizungu ni ngumu - you know the word "rig" has several official meanings i.e.

Africans have added a 5th meaning to the official list of definitions. i.e. STEAL!! rigging in an election contest is 'construct'... i.e. this election was 'rigged' means it was setup! preset.... either from candidate nomination to prevent candidates from showing up. or VR - ensuring that some certain people don't register effectively e.t.c.
You can rig technology i.e. set it up! network it, configure it - how is it going to work? e.t.c. so that it works as planned without surprises on election day.

unlike most people - his command of english is not bad. just listen to all his talks.

@ZZE123 context matters, when someone slices off context it normally ends up creating a narrative of their choosing and this is mostly that is done maliciously - remember the brexit drama? "the English FRANTICALLY GOOGLING 'WHAT IS THE EU?'"? after polling?With the support of graphs like these

with labels such as to enforce the narrative?
but compared to something the English really like doing "talk about the weather"

The spike was infinitesimal (at it's spike it was 1000 people out of country of 64 million). Context matters! when