Cast them out

While it is arguable that the Constitution of Kenya has an architecture that is maddening and inspiring in equal measure, there is one immutable fact about it: only the people who adopted, enacted and gave themselves the Constitution have the power to suspend it. It is not in the power of presidents, prime ministers, cabinet secretaries, parliamentarians, county governors, members of county assemblies, the securocracy or civil society to suspend the Constitution. That power is reserved exclusively and to the total exclusion of all others in The People.

It is fashionable among the political classes, after their failures of imagination, and the public's suffering of the consequences of those failures, to promote the suspension of the Constitution as part of a grand solution to political problems. The I-Will-Legalise-Bhang presidential candidate joins a long line of Quickmatt Julius Caesars who are arrogant enough to think that the powers of a dictator are all they need to right the ship of state and solve the problems of the people. He echoes the most recent demands that were made by political windbags of the ruling coalition at the height of the last general election when it seemed like their flag bearer was suffering at the polls. This constitutional imbecility must be nipped in the bud.

Kenyans have struggled for decades to overcome the dictatorship of their political masters. Many Kenyans have been murdered, jailed, exiled and violently assaulted for fighting against dictators. The Constitution, flawed as it is, is a testament to the struggle for self-determination by the people. Any presidential candidate that pines for absolute control over the affairs of the state, and the self-arrogation of the power to decide what rights the people shall enjoy, and the arrogance to pick and choose which fundamental freedoms to protect, must be cast out of the political arena like the constitutional skunk that he is. His constitutional values are a pox, deserving of not just inoculation but total eradication from the national political psyche. He deserves neither respect nor praise; he deserves nothing but the unremitting opposition of a people still fighting to be truly free.

Let it ring forth in the agora that Kenya does not need a presidential saviour. What Kenya needs is a politician capable of forging the national will into a commonweal, a resurrection of the Spirit of Harambee, where Kenyans of all stripes and shades will pull together towards a common goal: health, wealth, prosperity and peace. kenya does not want or need a presidential daddy and mummy. Kenyans are not infants to be told what they need. The days of "Kanu ni baba na mama" were buried in December 2002 when Kenyans sang "Yote yawezekana bila Moi!" and no one is looking to bring back the glory days of one-party rule and imperial presidencies.

Kenya faces serious problems and it needs serious politicians to help solve them. If the only thing one is bringing to the table is a desire to rule with untrammelled power, one demonstrates a lack of seriousness so colossal it is amazing that anyone even listens to him. We don't want dilettantes to be in charge of national affairs. It is time that we awoke to our responsibilities as citizens and banished the unhealthy desire for dictatorial powers in the same ash heap that we buried Kanuism and Moism.