My thoughts..

Politics is the quest to strike that sensitive balance or compromise between universal justice, governance and fiscal management of public/community resources. Religions (not to be confused with sects/cults) get interloped in this meshwork by the fact that they all tend to assure justice and peace to all adherents, both in this life and thereafter. They could be used as pillars to support appropriate governance and so could play a positive role in politics.

Problems with religion begin when mortals unilaterally take up the roles of spokespersons for their relevant deities and in so doing become judges of others in their struggle to self-justification. The other negative role of religion in politics is when the adherents tend to relegate their obligations to their relevant deities and just lay back awaiting their gods to mend the wrongs of bad politics. Prayer alone may not get the wrong persons out of office-it may come down to walking to the polling stations and actually voting to get this done.

Striking that perfect balance is an elusive venture since man became enterprising enough to  meddle into the affairs of his neighbour-which is what politics is all about, the shortcomings have ended up in global wars, ethnic cleansing, assimilation and displacements,  and rise of empires. Man’s progress has been loosely tied to politics though there’s a paradox in that good politics hasn’t always guaranteed ‘progress’.

Who is fooling who (Part 3)

I always feel very helpless and angry whenever I ponder the politics and the general state of governance in Kenya. I feel helpless to yell at Kenyans to wake up from the 100 years of slumber and utopian reverie we have been in. For how long will 'our leaders' treat us like tokens on a board game, chess pieces on a chess board, decks of cards to be shuffled and dealt out, heaping and shifting us whichever ways they deem fit to secure their own seats in the legislative and governance positions?
So who is fooling who in the Uhuru-Mudavadi-Jubilee Coalition scenario? What are the dealings being concocted by the other coalitions and what do they portend if they are not honoured? We now hear there was an MOU that was not submitted to the IEBC between Uhuru and Mudavadi. Since when did the masses' right to decide their own shift to these individuals? It is this helplessness and frustration that ignites tempers when a people feel cheated of their right, leading them to behave in the only way nature provides easily-violence, resistance. I just pray and hope that no one strikes the match in this dry, volatile and highly combustible situation and that we as Kenyans refresh our mass memory and avoid the 2007/8 scenario.

Time-Out, Please.

There are many ways to skin a cat, or so the saying goes and the cat that is Kenya definitely deserves to be skinned (if our governance could be equated to cat skin). The new constitutional disposition promises many avenues that will facilitate 'the skinning' which in my opinion is cleansing and making accountable the way we are governed, but we all should realize that this will not happen overnight. Rome, they say was not built in a day and our problems in Kenya are much more complex than the construction of a city.
Ours is the stripping of 100 years of domination, patronization and fiefdoms established through the years by the few powerful and mighty on the majority poor.

As we observe and get dazzled by the kaleidoscopic manner in which the politicians are arranging and re-arranging themselves, aligning themselves to tap the gravy train that is our sweat, we ought not be hypnotized by the drama like the snake does to its prey and get swallowed while in a stupor. All alert Kenyans need to stay focused on the goal and sensitize the rest of wananchi to 'kaa macho' otherwise it will be the same ball game all over again.

There is a move by some individuals masquerading as the representatives of Kenyans in the diaspora to urge the court to suspend the polls in march and however noble their argument is, they are playing into the already crowded 'game of thrones', of political acrobats inventing new moves and refining old ones.  Simply adding drama to an already chaotic stage. It will not bear the fruits we need at this point in time. Entrenching the spirit of political universal suffrage in Kenya should happen- and it will,  but it will definitely not happen before the next polls. There are many more Kenyans living in Kenya today and in March next year, (more than those in the diaspora) who will not be able to take part in the polls-for one reason or another. Many will be due to complex gerrymandering by our politicians, others will be due to deprivation of such basic necessities like food or water, but let us go and start the cleaning up process. The brooms might not be the best (as yet) but just let us start. A long journey starts with just one step. We will get better brooms as we go along.

There are promises by the new constitution that we should be focusing our energy on to implement, example being clauses dealing with leaders' integrity, the guaranteeing of security to all wananchi, and the facilitation of all resident Kenyans of voting age to register as voters. These are functions the government is well placed to perform and we need to hold it accountable to do so.