Wash-rinse-repeat. Sigh.

It is plain as the nose on your face: Kenya's politicians are incapable of quitting bad habits. The wash-rinse-repeat instinct is strong in them. Take, for example, the instinct to investigate and persecute former presidents. When Mwai Kibaki finally assumed office as The Third, some of the more zealous members of his Cabinet initiated the process of evicting Daniel Moi from Kabarnet Gardens, ostensibly because the property was "owned by the government" and, as a former government official, President Moi was not entitled to continue living there. President Kibaki, in his characteristically wise way, instead directed the Commissioner of Lands and Minister of Lands to proceed with haste to process and issue a title deed to the property in President Moi's name, and that was the end of that rubbish.

It seems that President Ruto's more excitable acolytes (with an unusual assist from the more semi-literate members of the putative minority party) have not taken any lessons from the proceedings of 2003. They are, with ill-grace, determined to sicc the police, the taxman, anticorruption authorities and public prosecutors on his predecessor, and they are determined to get their way no matter how churlish, small-minded and petty it makes them look. They are replaying the destabilising politics of 2003 and they don't care how it undermines the President's agenda or detracts from the necessary political work needed for the President's agenda to succeed.

The 2022 general election, especially the presidential election, was hard-fought. The winner prevailed despite him and his loyal lieutenants being the targets of state agencies, including the police and taxman. Instead of consolidating the president's victory, as had appeared to be the case in the first few weeks after the Supreme Court judgment, they have now turned their attention to schemes that do little to focus the mind on the president's agenda. Instead of behaving as a victorious political agglomeration, they are conducting themselves as if they are still intimidated by the leaders of the minority party, taking every public event by the leaders of the minority party as a mortal threat to their political survival. Consequently, they have done little to develop innovative policies that are needed to see through their grand ambitions.

Maybe I have it wrong. Maybe the public ill-will is a careful camouflage of nefarious schemes. Maybe they are throwing up enough smoke to distract us from the five-fingered discounts they are helping themselves to from the public purse. Who knows? But if they want to be taken seriously, f they want their agenda to be taken seriously, then they should do less ex-president baiting, and more agenda-setting. But, going with he current antics, it is unlikely that they will rouse themselves to govern or even govern effectively.