On the IEBC and hubris.

No one seems to get it. The government is supposed to serve the people. It is not supposed to serve itself. Whether it is the executive, parliament, the Judiciary or the plethora of "commissions", the government serves the people. That is how it should be.

But what do you do when the government says one thing and does another? Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that the government does not serve itself sometimes; after all part of the reason it has a monopoly to raise taxes is so that t can finance itself. But the purpose of a government is not just to serve itself. A government exists because the people consent to its existence. It's existence is for the good of the people.

But even when we claim that the government serves itself we mean that it serves an elite few within it. Presidents, prime ministers, ministers, generals, inspectors-general, judges, parliamentarians, principal secretaries, commissioners, and the like. The rank-and-file that execute the diktats of their seniors suffer the same predations as the people for whom they are in service. The elite lives for the power, the money and the prestige their government offices bring. This blinds them to their excesses. It gives rise to hubris. If their hubris remains untempered, the people pay a heavy toll. First as rising taxes and second as a withered, decimated Bill of Rights.

When high government officials have conversations among themselves ostensibly for the benefit of the people without engaging the people in those conversations, you know that hubris guides the decisions they make. Take the question of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission strategic plan. The IEBC claims that it is an "internal working document" meant to guide it in its operations. The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy claims that it is a blueprint for an ongoing fraud. And the ruling Jubilee Alliance sides with the IEBC and accuses Cord of being obsessed with placing Raila Odinga in charge by hook or by crook.

In this dialogue, it is only the high officials of government who are concerned with their powers and privileges. The people, for whom all three claim to be acting, have had no say in the matter. Their views are irrelevant because, as pundit connected to the Jubilee reminds Kenyans, the people "make up their minds on the date when they cast heir ballots." It is an arrogance on the high officials that has been cultivated by the enervation of the political process through the hollowing out of public institutions by corruption and hubris over the past twenty years.

We are a poor nation with a tiny but fabulously wealthy minority calling the shots. Much of that wealth has been generated from the government by high government officials turned entrepreneurs. This was through the kind of conversation revolving around the IEBC strategic plan taking place today: high government officials bargaining over the spoils of government with other high government officials. This is what the late Thomas Sankara caviled against and was murdered for. Lest the deaf-to-the-world high government officials forget, Thomas Sankara's spirit lives on.