In the past three years we have appointed a new electoral commission and installed a new electronic vote results transmission system because we are held hostage to our history of life-or-death presidential elections. Neither the commission nor the electronic vote transmission system inspires confidence, the commission because it is riddled with corrupt officials and the system because it may be vulnerable to outside manipulation. Into the breech, many have suggested, should step the United Nations. Sometimes our lack of foresight shocks me.
The United Nations is a sprawling bureaucratic organisation that accommodates a remarkable diversity of ideologies and actors. Its failings, however, render it wholly unsuited to the role of impartial arbiter in a Kenyan presidential election. We all acknowledge some of the good works it has done, but these are despite its inherent flaws which reveal a system that prefers status quos even when those status quos are grossly dehumanising.
Many will be familiar with the United Nations's response to the cholera epidemic it caused in Haiti in 2010 that led to the deaths of thousands. Some will be familiar with the persistent allegations that the United Nations leadership has refused to take any steps to prevent or punish UN peacekeepers who have raped victims escaping civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The UN's vacillation in 1994 was responsible for the worst genocide in Africa in a generation. The UN Security Council, the most powerful organ of the United Nations, did nothing to stop the United States and its "allies" when they descended upon Iraq, toppled its leadership, ushered in a decade of sectarian fighting and gave oxygen to the most violent terrorist organisations. And, of course, who can forget the United Nations's membership electing serial human rights violator, Saudi Arabia, to the chairmanship of the UN Human Rights Commission.
Our electoral challenges will not be fixed by a corrupt outsider like the UN. The only ones who can fix things are Kenyans being honest about the roles they play in their electoral system. The vast majority are afraid of the leaders they elect or appoint to high office. We are afraid to speak up because it will almost certainly lead to summary dismissal from frequently low-paying jobs. We are afraid to speak up because some leaders are known to command paid armies of violent young people who will kick in our heads at the snap of fingers. We are afraid because for generations we have been trained to be silent when our leaders speak. We are afraid because in Kenya it is very easy to be killed.
Until we contend with this fear, neither the UN or some other do-gooding international organisation will fix our presidential politics. We must be unafraid to call out the liars, thieves, murderers, embezzlers, fraudsters, rapists and buffoons we have elected or appointed to public office. We must be unafraid to speak up when billions are spent on white elephants that saddle the generations to come with debts that will cripple their potential. We must be unafraid to speak when the princes of the city, the captains of industry, the ministers of faith, the intelligentsia and the civil society mavens foment inequality, inequity and insecurity by their acts of commission and omission. In short, we must be unafraid to speak truth to power, to shout it from the skyscraper to the hilltops, the valleys to the basement clubs.
Until we can overcome our fear, we will be led by the nose about the worthwhileness of appointing the UN -- temporarily of course -- to supervise our elections. Did you know that UN peacekeepers have been on temporary duty in Jerusalem to monitor the peace between Israel and Palestinians since 1948? With its record of "successes", why would you want it to supervise a presidential election in Kenya in 2017?
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