Only the truly naive believe that the President is a hostage of cartels. Either they underestimate the considerable powers of the presidency or they overestimate the powers of the cartels. These would be corruption cartels, by the by. The President is not a hostage of any cartel; the President is hostage to history. He needs to break free.
If you truly believe that there is a cartel powerful enough to keep the President from achieving any of his political promises, then there is little to be done except to advise you that when the Little Green Men come, tin-foil hats have been known to deflect their mind-control rays, and be done with you. The power of the presidency is not what is prescribed by law; its power is as it is exercised by the President to achieve ends that he feels must be achieved.
Uhuru Kenyatta came to power with the weight of expectations bearing down on him, a son of a founding president and the protege of the founding president's successor. He was expected to have his father's steel in addition to his obvious charisma and the wilyness of his father's successor. He was never, ever seen as his own ma and this has contributed greatly to his own mixed-messaging. If he is to rule effectively, he must shake off the ghosts from his fathers rule and chase away the shadows from Baba Moi's, which have cast a shade that has proven immutable to the bright light of day.
You can tell that vestiges of Kenya's first two presidents' regimes are nipping at his heels every time he has to take an unpopular decision, or when he justifies some unfortunate matter. He is not free to declare his feelings on the matter, and no matter how many pet reporters drop hints about his work ethic or disciplinarian streak, he is seen as a son of one and a protege of another. Keeping artifacts from those two regimes around him only reinforces this fact.
Jomo had a Kalenjin deputy; so does Uhuru. Moi had a very vocal chorus section; so does Uhuru. Jomo was ultimately betrayed by his Ministers; it is only a matter of time before Uhuru's betray him. Moi tried to buy the loyalty of his electorate by making incompetents ministers and parastatal chiefs; this is the same road that Uhuru is walking. What the President does not seem to have is the fear of the people, something that Jomo and Moi exploited to the full, keeping their enemies discombobulated and the people in line. Both Jomo and Moi had the Special Branch for political crimes; Uhuru seems to have delegated the investigation and handling of political crimes to novices in his party.
Both Jomo and, eventually Moi, were unrivaled in their power and their resolve. It is difficult to say the same about our President. The speculation has engendered a certain lack of respect for both him and his office and it is why people are comfortable asserting that he is the hostage of cartels. Being president, at the end of the day, is not neat or pretty. If he wants to be President then he must be prepared to be hated by all his friends and feared by all his enemies. His friends must be prepared to hear "No!" and often. His enemies must face the full force of his wrath for crossing him. But first he must identify his friends and his enemies.
That well into his third year we do not have answers to these two questions is troubling. His government has come under great scrutiny and his friends and enemies are both rejoicing; his friends because they are safe from him and his enemies because they too are safe from him. Both conspire to sabotage his economic and political plans. Both conspire to reduce him to reaction every time something bad happens. He is not, it seems, the master of his fate. It is not cartels that have him in a age; it is the weight of his own history. Those who do not learn the proper lessons of history are doomed. I hope he escapes that fate.
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