Welcome to Sunday in Kitengela, where the air smells less like nyama choma and more like expired CS gas. While the rest of us were trying to survive the week’s inflation, the “Linda Mwananchi” rally turned into a live-action demonstration of how the state actually feels about your constitutional rights. Kalonzo Musyoka is out here crying for the international community to save us, as if the UN has a “stop-the-rungus” button. Two people are dead, fifty are in bandages, and the political elite have another set of martyrs to milk for their next press conference.

It’s the same tired script with a different date on the calendar. Edwin Sifuna is out there acting the hero, shouting about how he won’t retreat while his aides whisk him away in a tinted SUV the moment the first canister pops. It’s easy to be brave when you have a getaway car and a Twitter following. He claims there are “15 million Sifunas” ready to take his place, but I bet none of those 15 million have a gold-plated medical cover to handle the live bullets reportedly flying through the dust of Kajiado.

This isn’t just a random crackdown; it’s a desperate audition. As I pointed out in The Post-Raila Vacuum: 5 Leaders Fighting for the 5 Million ‘Baba’ Votes, everyone is currently scrambling to see who can scream “oppression” the loudest to inherit the old man’s base. They need the chaos. They need the police to overreact. Without a bleeding citizen to point at, these leaders are just well-dressed men with nothing to offer a country that’s currently choking on its own debt and deteriorating healthcare.

Even former CJ David Maraga came out of retirement to give us a lecture on “national values.” It’s cute, really. He talks about how development should be shared fairly, while the current administration treats the national budget like a personal ATM and the police force like a private security firm for their bruised egos. The IG promises accountability, and the Belgut MP demands investigations, but we all know how that ends: a file lost in a basement and a promotion for the guy who threw the most canisters.

In the end, the shops in Kitengela stayed closed, the boda boda riders lost a day’s wages, and two families are planning funerals they can’t afford. The politicians will go back to their mansions in Karen, scrub the faint smell of teargas off their designer suits, and wait for the next Sunday to do it all over again. In Nairobi, the only thing more reliable than the rain is the fact that the “Mwananchi” is the only one who actually gets hurt when the big boys play.