Valley of Decision

Kenyans, as we approach the month of March need to stop all and ponder the coming elections. We have very many times in the past been told that we are at the cross-roads and this time around, I really believe we are there- We don't need to be told.

We are going into the polls in a completely new constitutional framework. We are fresh from a murderous violence spree which we all can attribute to the greed and manipulation of our legislators and their goons. We have all been made to feel the pains of mass betrayal and have grown wiser.
Come polling day in March, the demographics demand that the youth of yesteryears have outgrown themselves and need to be replaced. All our traditions dictates this. The Kikuyu nation (c.f tribe) call theirs "Ituika".  This when the elders acknowledge the coming of age of their sons and abdicate their authority to the sons. The "Riika" called Irungu hands over authority to the Mwangi. Other nations (c.f tribes) in Kenya have their respective practices but with essentially the same purpose. This has happened since time immemorial. Customs and tradition demands this. From the national perspective, all those with direct linkage to the independence politicians need to be retired en-masse. Their gimmicks and gymnastics  in the recent past has shown that they have no principles or ideology geared to better the citizens' lot. All they are interested in is securing their positions of power and wealth, that is why they have been aligning and re-aligning themselves without so much as any consideration of the plight of their constituents.

The force that should be dictating our political choice come March should be in recognition of the advancements Kenyans have attained in the technological, and information realm. Historical, generational and demographic movements dictate that Kenyans reject Kanuism/Kenyattaism/Moism and their derivatives. The repugnant isms that have misruled the country since the colonialists left. The schisms created by these isms have been too painful to perpetuate. Let us commence the task of genuinely uniting the nation of Kenya. This is the watershed year and jubilee only means 50 years- Golden jubilee.

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.

Security NOW!!!

It is sad when a nation's security situation cannot be guaranteed to the citizens but it is even horrifying when the very organs of the state that are empowered and equipped to guarantee the said security themselves seem in dire need of help.
The security personnel in Kenya are in the cross hairs of forces (either foreign or domestic) yet to be identified. Forces so darely and bold they don't seem to care who they shoot at, Administration Police, Regular Police or KDF soldiers! This puts the ordinary mwananchi in a very scary situation. This might be the result of decades of in-breeding and nurturing impunity and general disregard of the law. It is even sadder that the real cause of the death of the immediate former Internal Security minister together with his deputy is yet to be known.
The Kenyan government(s) needs to get off the habit of knee-jerk responses and reactionary tactics in the face of national issues. The government's response to the Garisa incident is appalling. Even before the security personnel have investigated fully to know who or where the perpetrators of the original crime are, they mount an invasion and generally terrorize a town in total disregard of who is innocent or guilty. They thus loose the citizens' trust and goodwill, and the chance of ever finding the culprits and breed more disgruntled elements to attack them in future.
Now we have the Police force mounting their own operation into one end of the vast norther frontier in response to the massacre of their comrades while the Military is mounting their own into another section of the same frontier in response the murdering of three of their colleagues. Now that is a very sad situation.
While all that is happening, citizens with ancestral connections with the same northern frontier are being harassed and victimized in the city of Nairobi by criminal gangs and of course, they state the Police are not coming to their aid. They shout there is no government in Kenya! These statements, though unsubstantiated, could be very disturbing if true.
It is high time the government put everything on hold and be seen to be in control. The attention however, as all these happen, is the posturing and positioning of the politicians as they align themselves for the coming elections. All of them of course pleading with the citizens to register for the polls, reminding the citizens  of the evils of the post election violence of the yesteryears!!

Let's Be Clear

March is coming. A lot can happen in march as history can reveal. As happened to one Julius Caesar, who believed he had no capacity to fear anyone, the august house and the other one 'on the hill', in Nairobi are begging for respectable occupants. The contenders need to fear us, the voters, for as in the nursery school rhyme, 'Ngunyî-îrî maara-î', we can sing it (and we will) and pull out all those thirsting for our blood and public resources.
......

Ngunyî-îrî maara-î, nîikunyanaga-î, ta mwana na nyina-î,

Kunyûkia kagîo.....

The lineage of masters as inherited from the colonialists by our fathers and grandfathers is still plaguing us today in the poor disguise of reformists. They would want us believe they have our interests at heart but we now know better where their hearts lie- in the interests of their bank accounts. Their fathers told our fathers that they would eradicate poverty, disease and ignorance, these ills still hold us in bondage and their sons and daughters don't seem to notice it. They are in ignorance of our plight.

Again, who is fooling who???

I have always tried my best not to justify or qualify statements by politicians. I also don't subscribe to their apologists and sycophants.
Politicians are simply not easy to pre-guess because they are the most selfish of beings. They will change positions like the hands on a clock to suit their needs and all have the pre-existing condition of chronic amnesia, or selective memory.
Up to the build up towards the new constitution in Kenya, there were obvious divisions in prominent politicians, the protagonists being led by the PM and the antagonists by his former deputy in the ODM outfit who shortly thereafter completely fell out with the outfit claiming having been 'sold to the Hague' by the PM.

It was notable that the main bone of contention was 'being sacrificed to Ocampo' and not a plea of innocence. When the PM did not contest the allegations one would not be blamed for assuming that the PM's position was that he concurred with the investigators who found Hon. Ruto et al with a probable cause for prosecution. This would have been a fair position after all, all are innocent until proven guilty. But then again, politicians are one species not easy to understand!

Without going too far to find fault with anyone, Hon. Ruto has not exonerated himself from the sins past committed by himself, cronies or his henchmen in YK92, he still has yet to clear himself decisively of misappropriation of public land charges in a court of law. He clearly could be on the wrong side of chapter six of our constitution. Using the inconclusive bench mark of who was who in the drive to implement our new constitutional order as an indicator of who is with us versus against us, the line between the reformists and the conservatives (those against reforms dictated by the new constitution) should set the PM and Hon Ruto on opposing sides of the political divide. I am now told that the PM is apologizing to the Kalenjin community in general and to Hon. Ruto in particular for unspecified mistakes he has made in the past and pleading for a re-marriage. What gives here? Are we supposed to believe that now they both have the same convictions as to what direction our country is headed?

This move by the PM, who is still rated as the front runner in the race to the house on the hill because of his apparent reformist stance, is a total disqualification and it begs for a general re-think by the Kenyan voters. This move is a clear indication that what is needed in our politics is a genuine, credible third force. Needed is/are individuals who are selfless, focused and truly accountable to the nation. Individuals who will stand for the ordinary mwananchi come rain or shine and will not sacrifice their convictions on the altar of 'vote count'. For far too long we have subjected ourselves to the lies and deception of the ruling class who are only interested perpetuation of their grip on power. The whistle has been blown to stop these corrupt and selfish lot. The urgency of now as we approach the general elections is to clean up our august house and install leaders who will respect the voters and conduct themselves with civility, humility and respect our constitution.