When I posed the question whether the Jubilee Government could be powerless, it was in the context of their obsessive determination to project power by overtly deploying police in areas they deemed sensitive. Despite this atrocities continue to be perpetrated with impunity by unknown forces. Lamu has become the latest hotbed of unrest with not a week going by before multiple murders are reported in which men are the preferred targets.
The Jubilee Government is going to send the wrong message if it does not take a beat and look at the CORD dialogue plan in a rational and objective manner. It is no longer moot to point out that public safety has taken a harsh beating since the Westgate debacle. Corruption is no longer being mentioned as the Number One priority. Instead, the Jubilee government has obsessively tracked everything that CORD's leaders have said and done since Raila Odinga jetted back from his Boston Sojourn a little over a month ago.
The President and his Cabinet Secretary for the Interior may have information that links Raila Odinga and Issa Timammy, the Governor of Lamu, to attacks on "outsider" communities in Lamu's Mpeketoni and Hindi, but because of the degree of illegitimacy of their public safety stance there are few Kenyans, save perhaps TNA die-hards, who are willing to believe the statements they have issued linking the "opposition" to the groups causing bloodshed in Lamu. It could partly be that their statements are always about "national security" and how they will not allow it to be "compromised" or that they have not made any statements about what they are going to do in the name of public safety. It does not help that the Inspector-General of Police and the Director of Criminal Investigations are seen as political players in the Jubilee attempts at scuttling CORD's political rejuvenation.
We cannot underestimate the fissures in Kenya. They have been allowed to widen since the bloodshed that followed the 2007 general election. Disillusionment is a natural byproduct, but it is the hardening of stances on either side that is worrying. CORD has hardened its stance against the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. Even with the defense of the Commission by CORD elected representatives defending themselves against election petitions, the opaque and almost unaccountable manner that the Commission has conducted itself has only won it friends in the Jubilee government. Whether the President and his cohort wish to admit it or not, the Commission will remain a live issue for "dialogue" up to the next general elections.
The Jubilee Government can overhaul the CORD opposition if it simply takes the right steps. By all means keep a security eye on them if you must, but do it smartly. It might be that the Inspector-general is not the man to oversee this; in which case allowing him to remain in office will hamstring your efforts to appear to be in control. This obsession with the security of the state must end; Kenyans now feel as if they are under siege from al Shabaab and their government with the overwhelming show of force projected in the country. Political statements, if they must be made, shouldn't be celebrate successes that do not resonate with the mwananchi; by all means let us celebrate the Euro Bond, the Standard Gauge Railway (if it is ever built), the laptops project (if it is ever completed), wind power (if it is ever deployed) and economic growth (if it ever occurs).
But it is successes like free maternity (which eliminates the corruption that had become endemic in public hospitals) and Huduma Centres (which have rendered hundreds of dodgy middlemen jobless) that have a direct impact on the lives of the mwananchi. If you really want to attract investors who will invest in the kind of capital projects that will have greater knock-on effects than Euro Bond types, invest in the safety and comfort of the mwananchi and make them feel as if they are more important than the security of your presidency. So long as many Kenyans feel that Mr Kenyatta is more interested in retaining the presidency, they will not bother with the nation-building project that he would like all to participate in; instead they will do little to help even when helping is in their best interests.
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