The Big Picture

The Big Picture obscures the details of our lives. A Parliamentary Committee was appointed to investigate the volatility of the shilling against the dollar in the Third Quarter of 2011. The shilling's volatility affected the cost of living of millions of Kenyans, pushing up the cost of food, energy and transport and pushing many Kenyans to the fringes of the economy. The Committee was not interested in how the shilling affected the lives of millions of Kenyans, but whether the Governor of the Central Bank was asleep on the job. The deliberations betrayed that, as with other political matters, it is the ethnic element of the matter that captured their attention. No one disputes that the ethnic equation is always foremost in the minds of the political class and they are loath to consider anything else when addressing the matters that come before them. The demands for the resignation - stepping aside - of the Governor of the Central Bank, seems to be tinged with the stain of the ethnicity that pervades political and public discourse in Kenya these days. With the tabling of the Committee's report before the National Assembly, the Members of Parliament predictably lined up along ethnic lines, with members of the Governor's ethnic community defending his track record. It does not help that when Uhuru Kenyatta stepped aside as Finance Minister, he was replaced by someone from his community.

The National Cohesion and Integration Commission has published a report that exposes the ethnic rot that pervades the public universities in Kenya. The report states that the lion's share of admissions to public universities are taken by the members of Kenya's five biggest ethnic communities. It also states that employment in the public universities reflects the ethnicity of the Chancellors. In our obsession with the ethnic question, we have blinded ourselves to the situation in the public and, to some extent, the private sectors. The Parliamentary Committee and the NCIC have taken the task of resolving the ethnic imbalances in the public sector as their reason for existence, engaging in spirited activity to root out one particular community from the levers of power.

This is their Big Picture. The details are writ large on the faces of the Kenyans struggling to stay afloat. Hon Adan Keynan, leading the pack of howling MPs is determined to cut down the Governor of the Central Bank a peg or two regardless of whether the Governor's resignation will improve the lot of the Kenyans. Now, the National Assembly itself has decided to take a less than casual look at the question of ethnicity while throwing a lifeline to the Governor of the Central Bank. This really tells you just where their priorities lie; not in resolving the relatively simpler question of economic growth and job creation, but one of the most intractable problems that has bedevilled the nation since the British employed their divide-and-conquer technique to keep the restless natives at bay during their 70 years of colonial rule. The picture politicians are determined to examine has nothing to do with the realities of day-to-day life but everything to do with their political longevity. Without the ability to point at an ethnic community and blame it for what ails his community, the politicians would have no choice but to do what they were elected to do: legislate. There are few of these characters that have the ability to read through the thousands of legislative verbiage that is published every Parliamentary session and look intelligent in the bargain. Few are capable of appreciating the impact laws have on the lives of the ordinary. They, instead, do not have any qualms in using the legislative agenda of the National Assembly to advance their interests rather than those of their constituents.

The recent debates on the fall of the shilling and the President's decision to reject the County Governments Bill expose the vacuum in leadership that is waiting to be filled. Kenyans have an opportunity at the next general elections to radically redesign their government, electing only men and women capable of improving their lives, instead of injecting conflict and hate into the process of governing. Their Big Picture and ours are different. If they are incapable of determining the relatively simple cause of the shilling's precipitous fall without raising the spectre of ethnicity, we cannot expect them to accomplish the Herculean task of ending the ethnic problem.