On the record

He had no title. He spoke anyway.

For years, when Inooro TV came to Thika for the street view, it kept finding the same man. Eventually it stopped finding him and started booking him, with a title on the screen.

Why it counts

Anyone can hold an opinion in a campaign year

It started in the street. Inooro TV kept finding the same trader in the crowd, willing to put his face on television and say the thing everybody at the stage was already saying quietly. He held no office. There was nothing protecting him, and his business was in the same town as the people he was criticising. He said it anyway.

Then the station stopped stopping him in the street and started sitting him down.

Patrick Maina Macharia in the Inooro TV studio, captioned Maina wa Macharia, Mũthathaūri wa Wonjoria — Inooro TV, *Uge Waku*. The caption reads **Maina wa Macharia** and, beside it, his title: **Mũthathaūri wa Wonjoria**.

Read that lower-third again. A national broadcaster put him in the studio, named him, and gave him a title: Mũthathaūri wa Wonjoria, the traders’ advocate. Not a candidate. Not a politician. The man who speaks for the people who trade. Somebody else decided that was what he was, and put it on screen.

He did it repeatedly, in Gĩkũyũ, on the subjects that cost traders money. Three of them come back again and again.

The test to apply: ask what any candidate was saying in public in the years when nobody was voting, and who was willing to describe them that way on the record. Most have nothing to show. This is what Maina has.

The three subjects

Towing, the stage, and where the money went

Towing and clamping

A tow truck takes a working vehicle out of the economy for a day and charges the owner for the privilege. Maina argued the case for matatu owners and traders on air across two segments, on enforcement that punishes the person with the least room to absorb it.

The Thika stage

Transport is the lifeblood of this town’s economy, and the stage is where it is either organised or left to chance. He has spoken about what taxis and matatus face there for years, which is why the night transport pledge in this manifesto is not a new idea.

The Infrastructure Fund

Where public money goes, and who is watching it. This is the direct ancestor of the Published Ward: the same question asked from outside, now offered as an undertaking from inside.

The manifesto did not start with the manifesto.

Night transport, a published tender register, money that can be followed. Every one of these was a complaint Maina was making on television before it became a pledge on a website. A plan is easier to believe when you can watch it being argued for years earlier.