I
love Kenyans. No, I really do. Hours after Barack Obama secured a
second term as the President of the United States, Kenyan politicians,
especially presidential candidates, were sending him messages of
congratulations and attempting to bask in the glow of his continuing
history-making presidential career. That is par for the course. There
isn't a world leader or aspiring world leader who did not send Barack
Obama a message of congratulations. What makes our situation
spectacularly, fantastically humorous was an ODM press conference
headlined by Ababu Namwamba where he and his colleagues attempted to
draw parallels between the Obama victory and the shambles that are the
Kenyan presidential campaigns.
Isn't it time we admitted to ourselves and in public that we suck when it comes to the practice of politics as a profession, a calling or as an art? The last truly great politician was Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and we ruined him when we attempted to oust him before the good voters of Kenya had gotten fed up with him. If those idiot airmen had not decided that their coup was a bright idea, perhaps Moi would not have been the gargoyle staring down at us for the twenty extra years he ruled with an ever heavier hand. Raila Odinga may be the consummate politician, but Mwai Kibaki is the more successful. Even after he was 'demoted' by Moi, allegedly because he had become quite ineffective as Veep, Mwai Kibaki still managed to pass himself off as the doyen of the opposition, remaining Leader of the Official Opposition until the day the coalition crafted by others propelled him to the presidency. All of Raila Odinga's previous attempts to ascend to the highest office in the land have ended in disaster, none worse than the 2007 general election.
Despite Mr Odinga's many fumbles in his quest for the presidency, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta and the rest of them continue to underestimate Raila Odinga's political potency. In 2009 and 201, deep in the campaign for the Proposed Constitution, William Ruto bet all his marbles that he could outwit the Langata MP. Cleverly hooking up with the so-called watermelons, Mr Ruto would always take any position that challenged Raila Odinga's. Their falling out after the arrest of thousands of youth for the PEV and the eviction of thousands of families for the reclamation of the Mau water tower ensured that Mr Ruto had become Mr Odinga's strongest political foe. It came down to Naivasha. Mr Ruto predictably refused to go along with is party leader and co-deputy leader when they supported a Parliamentary System, rather than a Presidential System, for the organisation of government. Mr Ruto and his allies had set so many hurdles in the way of the constitutional review process that the Naivasha retreat was taking place very close to one of the deadlines in the process. If they got their way in Naivasha, they could stymie the Prime Minister's ambitions. When the PM ostensibly gave in to their demands and went along with the Presidential System that so engrossed them, they realised that they had been tricked; the PM all along wanted a Presidential System on the presumption that when he became president, he would not have to appoint the likes of Mr Ruto to his Cabinet.
The same too was the case when Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga joined hands and tried to forestall the ICC process before it even took off. Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta and their fellow travellers had assumed that the two Principals must be on the infamous Waki List handed to Kofi Annan for safe-keeping and delivery to the ICC prosecutor if the GoK failed to find a way of trying the persons listed by the good judge. Though the two voted with the President and PM to set up a local mechanism, they ensured that their allies shot down the Bills every time they came to the National Assembly for consideration. They must have jumped out of their skins when Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, unsealed the Waki Envelope and indicted the two but not the President or the PM. In the midst of the presidential campaigns they have had also deal with the ICC process.
The hilarious attempts of the likes of Ababu Namwamba to compare Barack Obama's successful campaign to any of the dozen or more presidential campaigns in Kenya is a mockery of the cruelest kind. These men and women are pygmies to Barack Obama's titan. They are small of ambition, small of intellect and small of public spiritedness. They are the epitome of everything we have come to loath about politicians. They are the stereotypical politicians parodied in popular media. Their leadership skills have been at the service of their avarice, leading their colleagues in the National Assembly on campaigns of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the welfare of the peoples they swore to faithfully represent in the National Assembly. Rather than comparing ourselves to the United States or Barack Obama, we should be comparing ourselves against well-known less-than-equal societies and nations such as the Stalinist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the Socialist Peoples Republic of China, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, the apartheid-like Jewish State, socialist Cuba, Bolivarian Venezuela, or the one-man-rule Russian Federation. We are nowhere near to comparing ourselves to the world's leading democracies. Not by a long shot.
Isn't it time we admitted to ourselves and in public that we suck when it comes to the practice of politics as a profession, a calling or as an art? The last truly great politician was Daniel Toroitich arap Moi and we ruined him when we attempted to oust him before the good voters of Kenya had gotten fed up with him. If those idiot airmen had not decided that their coup was a bright idea, perhaps Moi would not have been the gargoyle staring down at us for the twenty extra years he ruled with an ever heavier hand. Raila Odinga may be the consummate politician, but Mwai Kibaki is the more successful. Even after he was 'demoted' by Moi, allegedly because he had become quite ineffective as Veep, Mwai Kibaki still managed to pass himself off as the doyen of the opposition, remaining Leader of the Official Opposition until the day the coalition crafted by others propelled him to the presidency. All of Raila Odinga's previous attempts to ascend to the highest office in the land have ended in disaster, none worse than the 2007 general election.
Despite Mr Odinga's many fumbles in his quest for the presidency, William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta and the rest of them continue to underestimate Raila Odinga's political potency. In 2009 and 201, deep in the campaign for the Proposed Constitution, William Ruto bet all his marbles that he could outwit the Langata MP. Cleverly hooking up with the so-called watermelons, Mr Ruto would always take any position that challenged Raila Odinga's. Their falling out after the arrest of thousands of youth for the PEV and the eviction of thousands of families for the reclamation of the Mau water tower ensured that Mr Ruto had become Mr Odinga's strongest political foe. It came down to Naivasha. Mr Ruto predictably refused to go along with is party leader and co-deputy leader when they supported a Parliamentary System, rather than a Presidential System, for the organisation of government. Mr Ruto and his allies had set so many hurdles in the way of the constitutional review process that the Naivasha retreat was taking place very close to one of the deadlines in the process. If they got their way in Naivasha, they could stymie the Prime Minister's ambitions. When the PM ostensibly gave in to their demands and went along with the Presidential System that so engrossed them, they realised that they had been tricked; the PM all along wanted a Presidential System on the presumption that when he became president, he would not have to appoint the likes of Mr Ruto to his Cabinet.
The same too was the case when Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga joined hands and tried to forestall the ICC process before it even took off. Mr Ruto and Mr Kenyatta and their fellow travellers had assumed that the two Principals must be on the infamous Waki List handed to Kofi Annan for safe-keeping and delivery to the ICC prosecutor if the GoK failed to find a way of trying the persons listed by the good judge. Though the two voted with the President and PM to set up a local mechanism, they ensured that their allies shot down the Bills every time they came to the National Assembly for consideration. They must have jumped out of their skins when Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, unsealed the Waki Envelope and indicted the two but not the President or the PM. In the midst of the presidential campaigns they have had also deal with the ICC process.
The hilarious attempts of the likes of Ababu Namwamba to compare Barack Obama's successful campaign to any of the dozen or more presidential campaigns in Kenya is a mockery of the cruelest kind. These men and women are pygmies to Barack Obama's titan. They are small of ambition, small of intellect and small of public spiritedness. They are the epitome of everything we have come to loath about politicians. They are the stereotypical politicians parodied in popular media. Their leadership skills have been at the service of their avarice, leading their colleagues in the National Assembly on campaigns of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the welfare of the peoples they swore to faithfully represent in the National Assembly. Rather than comparing ourselves to the United States or Barack Obama, we should be comparing ourselves against well-known less-than-equal societies and nations such as the Stalinist Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the Socialist Peoples Republic of China, the theocratic Islamic Republic of Iran, the apartheid-like Jewish State, socialist Cuba, Bolivarian Venezuela, or the one-man-rule Russian Federation. We are nowhere near to comparing ourselves to the world's leading democracies. Not by a long shot.
No comments:
Post a Comment