Democracy for Idiots.

Even Winston Churchill, that paragon of tolerance (God, I wish there was a sarcasm font) hated democracy, but couldn't think of anything better to replace it with. A theory that formed the bedrock of the neoconservative takeover of the United States Congress in the wake of 9/11 was that rights and freedoms had to be curtailed in order for the people to be kept safe and the security of the nation to be assured. What became the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) was enacted and US citizens have been paying for it ever since.

Democracy is now the reason why terrorists are free to blow up Kenyans and murder them in their dozens. Our democratic space is a gateway to the radicalisation of the youth, especially in places of worship and institutions of learning. Refugee camps have become breeding grounds for extremists and refugees have only two choices: become suicide bombers or go on living in straitened circumstances. That, at least, is the ridiculous theory.

Kenya is not the United States and the freedoms and rights guaranteed by our constitution may be similar to those guaranteed by the US constitution, but they are not the same. For one we don't have a ridiculous right to bear arms. Anyone who truly believes that Kenyans have ever enjoyed the freedoms and rights that US citizens do has surely not been paying attention. It is, therefore, fallacious to suggest that it is our democratic space that has encouraged extremism, radicalisation and terrorism on our homeland.

We know what promotes radicalisation, extremism and terrorism on our homeland, and democracy or the democratic space are not it. They never have been. First, obviously, is graft, petty and grand. Homeland security, that is, border and customs control, intelligence operations, defense strategy and policing have been hollowed out for decades by a perniciously pervasive corruption that has survived three Presidencies - and seems likely to survive a fourth. Whether it is the acquisition of documents of identity, travel documents, work permits, visas, certificates of company registration, land titles - all documents with security-related implications - graft seems to have smoothened the way for extremists, radicals and terrorists to walk among us with impunity.

Second, poverty, inequity and marginalisation reinforce the ill effects of graft. Among those charged with keeping us safe are to be found Kenyans living in extreme poverty for all the risks they take, but with the officer class living like princes of the city. But among the people, the situation is dire. Fifty one years after independence, there are towns where paved roads are a figment of the imagination, as are piped water, affordable electricity, effective basic healthcare or quality basic education. Poverty, disease and illiteracy stalk their lives, and make them that much easier to seduce with promises of divine glory and material wealth for the price of obeisance to an unknown force for change, which is what the extremists and radicals promise.

Without the graft, tackling poverty, inequity and marginalisation would be easier to do though no walk in the park. But the entire security edifice is built on graft, the whitened bones of honour and duty lying in the scorching desert of public safety and national security. For every ten traffic policemen taking fifty shillings to look the other way as a matatu carries on like a bat out of hell, there is the "boss" playing fast and loose with the tender to supply Third-Generation "digital" identity cards, passports, forensics labs, "research" ships for the navy, Phantom F5 fighter jets, digital communications networks and the like all because the lure of a "cut" of the billions at stake is too strong to resist. Anyone who says that graft flourishes because of the freedoms and rights enshrined in Chapter Four is an idiot and should be treated as such.

We know what we must do to keep the people safe and the nation secure. "Tightening" the legal framework is not it; properly enforcing the law we have is. How an incompetent Inspector-General is fired and then appointed as the chairperson of an agency that plays a frontline role in the safety of our borders borders on the sacrilegious. How alleged recipients of foreign bribes continue to hold high office is rubbing the peoples' noses in it. How someone can suggest that a militarised police state will keep us safe and the nation secure when the forces of law and order are in cahoots with the agents of destruction remains a peculiarly Kenyan insult for which we have no retort.