Recall them.

Is it wrong to state without fear that my heart is in Ukambani? I should hope not. Though I'm a long-time resident of the Green City in the Sun, it is the affairs of my motherland that keep me sane. One day, and that day may come sooner that we all think, I shall retreat to the home of my ancestors, raise a family and crops, not necessarily in that order. But my heart is distressed at the antics of one of my governors. Dr Alfred Mutua is obviously an intelligent man (we will ignore the hiatus as the government spokesman) and also, obviously, a consummate politician. Going toe-to-toe with the terrifying Wavinya Ndeti and Mutua Katuku to emerge victorious is a victory worth celebrating. But when he joins with the likes of William Kabogo and Ken Lusaka to demand "better treatment because we are governors," doubts about the governor's intentions for the people of Machakos begin to emerge.

Mwai Kibaki was quite right to tell off the governors assembled in Naivasha. The issues that they enumerated in their ill-advised memo to the President reveal men (and it is all men, remember?) whose idea of service delivery is setting up their (mostly) fat asses in palatial homes, offices and swanky cars, while the people they "lead" live in squalid misery. Back to my beloved Ukambani. Makueni has the rather brainy Kivutha Kibwana (we will forget the little hiatus as Mwai Kibaki's "advisor" on coalition affairs) while Kitui has the equally brainy Julius Malombe. Thank God the two are professors; it must explain why they are not getting all worked up over flags and offices the way "Dr" Mutua is.

Received wisdom has it that Machakos is set to be the most important county in Ukambani because of its proximity to Nairobi and Dr Mutua's ties to the Mt Kenya region. Allow me to offer an alternative: Kitui. Kitui sits on large reserves of coal, iron and limestone. The coal, if it is exploited intelligently, and not in the manner that Kiraitu Murungi's ministry had intended, is set to be the backbone of an electricity revolution in Ukambani, climate change deals notwithstanding. The limestone, if properly exploited, is set to establish Kitui as a rival to Machakos as a producer of cement. The iron...you get my drift, don't you?

Both Kivutha Kibwana and Julius Malombe demonstrate that governance is not about the flash-in-the-pan moments when one gets notoriety, the kind that Dr Mutua is attracting with his bandwagoning over the flags and whatnots of the past week. Governance is about establishing systems that will help you meet the challenges the your people face. This is the path that Dr Evans Kidero, who does not behave like "Dr" Mutua at all, has chosen to tread. (Now that we know he has the strength of character to sow panic in the corruption cartels in the City, we wait to see how long he lasts before things become kawaida.)

Dr Kidero, when he was informed that the PM's office would not be available to him as Nairobi's governor, announced that he would work even out of his car if necessary; it is not the trappings of power that make one honourable but the performance of his duty even in the face of challenges. Dr Mutua and the rest of cabal that thinks they should be treated like kings need to learn this lesson before we are motivated to seek their recall. In California, an actor unseated a sitting governor in recall election; this is something the new governors should keep in mind when going about their duties.

Kiai and Mutua: You are on your own.

It is interesting to observe how the ones who campaigned against the election of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, and who invested so heavily in the election petitions challenging the results of the election, are faring after the Supreme Court of Kenya declared that the election of the two was valid. The Mutunga Court, after fourteen days of intense legal gymnastics, declared that despite the irregularities that even the IEBC admitted had occurred, the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as president and that of William Ruto as deputy president was after all valid. Raila Odinga swiftly accepted the verdict of the court. However, there are those who are still fighting the election and the re-litigating the election petitions, long after everyone else has set their minds to move on.

Maina Kiai, the former head of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and Makau Mutua, the director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, had done everything in their power to ensure that first, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto would not be on the ballot, and second, failing in that mission, to ensure they lost the election petition challenging their election. The two are two for two: Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto were on the ballot and the court dismissed the petition challenging their election.

Messrs Kiai and Mutua have not taken the news well. Mr Kiai penned a poisonous diatribe against "home guards" linked to the Uhuru presidency and another one calling the Charperson of the IEBC vile names for the manner in which his lawyer, the combatively indefatigable Ahmednasir Abdullahi, defended him in court. Makau Mutua has declared categorically that he will not and cannot accept Uhuru Kenyatta as the president of Kenya.

For two eminent human rights campaigners to treat the will of at least 6 million Kenyans in such a cavalier manner beggars belief. The Second Liberation was all about unleashing the will of the people to make the choices that they will without the nannying, oppressive hand of the government leading them hither and thither. With the dismantling of the KANU machinery that had been abused by former presidents, Kenyans overwhelmingly ratified a new constitution that guaranteed them democratic rights that had been stifled for decades. The flip side of the bargain was that politicians, whether standing for the presidency or some other public office, had to offer themselves to the people in the most persuasive way possible. Mr Makau continues to argue that Mr Kenyatta is an insider and that he benefited from his links to the government and its machinery. He refuses to accept that Mr Kenyatta and the wily Mr Ruto made a compelling case to the people of Kenya, persuading many from areas other than their strongholds in the Mt Kenya region and the Rift Valley.

Some of us were opposed to the election of Uhuru Kenyatta or William Ruto and we made our feelings known at the ballot. That battle is now past and we are prepared to live with our choices, or lack of them. Some of us were never persuaded that the two should not be on the ballot, regardless of the persuasion from Messrs Kiai and Mutua. We never agreed that the ICC was the killer knock-out punch that would deny them their place on the ballot. And we never agreed with the two that they were hamstrung by Chapter 6 of the Constitution. We thought that their manifesto was a pipe-dream; now we will see whether they will prove us wrong once again. But we will not join Messrs Kiai and Mutua in their poisonous campaign against a government that is yet to even take office officially; that is a path to heartache or worse. We will do what other patriots are doing: we will work with the government we have to make our lives a little better.

Amka, Governor Kidero!

As a resident of the County of Nairobi City I have an obligation to keep my governor on his toes or bring him to his knees. That is a responsibility I take seriously. In the previous local government regime, my interest in local issues was reduced to keeping an eye out for ex-classmates who'd fallen on hard times and had a penchant for the local moonshine in the hopes that our encounters would be brief. Now, I am not so blasé. I will still do my utmost to avoid former schoolmates with their hands out but now I am taking an interest in issues that affect, at a deep personal level, my quality of life. So Governor Kidero, please take note. I have my eye on you, and you had better deliver on your promises.

I am a resident of Harambee Ward, Makadara Constituency. Over the past decade my quality of life has deteriorated. Sewers are frequently blocked and I do not remember the last time it rained an drains did not fill up and spill over. The roads in my particular neighbourhood have been colonised by hordes - yes, hords - of jua kali artisans, mama mbogas and sundry maize roasters, samosa fryers and the iniquitously ubiquitous matatus, some belonging to our new senator, Mike Sonko. My personal security is never assured when I wonder home in the wee hours of the night because all our streetlights seem to have acquired a mythical ability to stay dark. My health, and that of my loved ones, continues to be endangered because your predecessors at City Hall failed to do anything about the absence of sanitation bins or sanitation companies that failed to collect garbage without spilling most of it on their way to the Dandora dump.

On the day you were sworn in, the life of any vehicle I decide to acquire was endangered - the one place we were sure I could find a mechanic at a price I could afford was at the famous NCCK garages along Rabai Road. Someone in City Hall - perhaps you should have a chat with the outgoing Town Clerk and find out who - decided to flatten the place and set police on Martin, my favourite mechanic, and his colleagues, chasing them all over Buru Buru for some unknown and, perhaps, unknowable, reason. If City Hall has decided, or had decided, to sell the plot to some fly-by-night "real estate developer" at the expense of the motoring denizens of Eastlands, please let us know so that we can make alternative arrangements in future.

Dr Kidero, there are two SOS Villages in Harambee Ward and they are sanctuaries for hundreds of children who have fallen on bad times. But the one in Buru Buru Phase 2, as the girls' secondary school next door, face harrowing environmental conditions. What are you going to do about the extremely loud "bars" that blare their music into the dead of night while these children and students sleep? What are you going to do about the hordes - yes, that word again, hordes - of drug-peddlers who have made it their mission in life to corrupt the morals of the youth of Buru Buru?

This is what I am demanding of you, my dear governor. Kick some ass at City Hall and restore the City's sanitation department to what it was before City councilors got their grubby little hands on it. Restore the security of their night by reviving the once brilliant streetlights. Save the future of our children from the clutches of the men and women who'd corrupt ti with drugs, alcohol and loud, incessant noise. Remind the Buru Buru Matatu Welfare Association that passengers may only be collected and deposited at designated bus stops: the junction on Mumias South Road where the Uchumi Supermarket is located and the new one locally known as Mutindwa are not designated bus stops. Slap sanctions on the Nairobi Water and Sewrage Company if it continues to vacillate over the rehabilitation of the constantly blocked sewer lines in Jericho, Jerusalem and Harambee estates. Do this and I will campaign for your re-election - anonymously of course; I don't want to lose my comfy civil service job.

Let the women prevail.

All politics is local. It is local issues that should now shape political discourse. That no woman was elected governor is an indictment of a culture that favours premogeniture over all else. Was there no woman in a position to be accorded the privilege of showing that women, too, are a political force to be reckoned with. Even at the national level, Martha Karua's presidential candidature came a cropper. The tens of millions she must have spent, perhaps even a billion or two, seems such a waste. Why did women perform so dismally at the hustings on The Fourth?

Culture, it seems, is not keeping pace with the Second Liberation reforms. Women must perform twice as well to be taken seriously by Kenyan voters. In the week leading to the Supreme Court's decision on the election of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, the name on everyone's lips was that of Kethi Kilonzo. It is not just her parents who are proud of her; Kenyans were unanimous that her performance before the Mutunga Court is the stuff that legend is built on. She may have her fifteen minutes, but we all hope and pray that she is the face of the future. Women must and shall stand at the head of many institutions. It is just a matter of time that their place in the national psyche will no longer be at the forbearance of old men in smoke-filled backrooms, but a matter of course that elicits little, if any, comment.

The Second Liberation gains and and the women rights movement are now intertwined; we cannot have the one without the other. But these two reforms are being threatened by bad habits from the past. Now while we may appreciate the place of the likes of Zipporah Kittony in the Second Liberation and women movement discourse, their recycling at the top of naitonal politics is an indictment of the thinking of the men in charge of our collective national destiny. While many able-bodied, intelligent and charismatic leaders are forging ahead - like Gladys Boss Shollei at the Supreme Court, Catherine Mumma at the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution, Kethi Kilonzo in the legal profession, Julie Gichuru in the media, Nasim Devji in banking, and Carol Radull in sports broadcasting - it beggars belief that Kenya is still held in thrall to tired women who have done precious little for the advancement of the idea of women in power. They became caricatures and they held back the women movement by simply refusing to accept that they were part of something greater than their ambitions.

If all politics is local then it is at the local level that women must begin making their mark. So they were not elected to positions of power. But they still have the opportunity to show how far we have come when many of them will make their debuts in power politics when they are appointed to County Executive Committees and the management boards of cities and urban areas under Kenya's brand-new devolved structure. They have a chance to build a reputation for hard-core politicking at the grassroots. Perhaps when they do, Kenyans may not have to do with the traditional tokenism associated with the likes of Esther Passaris or Rachel Shebesh that has done so much to set back the cause of women over the decade of Mwai Kibaki's reign. Ms Kilonzo and many in her mould are the generation of women leaders and opinion-makers who will lead this country out of the shackles of their cultures and gender stereotypes. Let us hope they prevail.

Moving on.

The Supreme Court of Kenya has lowered the boom on Raila Odinga's chances at the presidency. Whether he retires from politics or not, Mr Odinga has done much to advance the course of civilised political discourse like no other man has done in Kenya over the past fifty years. Many will credit Mr Odinga with the gains made from the Second Liberation and we will forever be in his debt. Uhuru Kenyatta is set to be sworn in on the 9th of May. For only the second time in our history, power is being transferred peaceably. Credit, surely, must go to the armies of peace-makers in our midst who did so much to prime the nation for peaceful elections.

There have been counter-arguments from those who were determined to keep Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto, his running mate and deputy president elect, from the ballot and, after their victory, from the national Executive. They have attempted to paint a picture that does not resonate with the feelings of millions. They claim that in our pursuit of "peace at any cost", valuable "democratic space" is being sacrificed. They argue that the media has been muzzled, refusing or prevented from publishing stories that would put the lie that Kenya is not peaceful. They have argued that the Executive, through the ministries of information and internal security have done all in their power to control how people think and how they associate with each other. They refuse to learn from the lessons of 2007; it is only when people were allowed unfettered enjoyment of one right, free expression or free association, for example, that things went to hell in a minute.

Most Kenyans are of the view that the nation won on Saturday. When the Mutunga Court declared the election of Uhuru Kenyatta free and fair, and Raila Odinga swiftly endorsed the judgment of the Court, Kenya won. There were few incidences of violence and Kenyans were killed. But for the most part, the nation was unanimous that there was no need to set fire to others' homes or properties; there was no need to go after your neighbour with a panga or a simi simply because your candidate had conceded. (The editors at CNN must be weeping into their beers after Kenyans studiously refused to set fire to the nation on the 4th of March or the 30th.)

We are in uncharted waters, though. The president-elect and deputy president-elect are still indicted at the International Criminal Court. How they thread the needle of running a nation while undergoing trial in a foreign land is a question that we are yet to answer satisfactorily. Flippant references to e-mail and Skype will not suffice. The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission spent billions of shillings on electronic systems that failed at the first instance. Will there be an audit to determine whether we got value for money? If not, whose heads will roll? Devolution is taking shape in the face of an assault on county governments by the national Executive. Will the law prevail or the interests of a few mandarins in the Office of the President?

Our fifty-year experiment with democracy is evolving faster than it did in the West or Asia or, indeed, in the rest of Africa. While the pace of reforms in the national government are slower than we expected, the place of the county governments will determine whether they are carried to their logical end or not. It is at county level that the needs of Kenyans must be met. Better schools for our children, better hospitals for us all and the faster growth of the economy and employment for the armies of youth out of university, technical colleges or secondary school. We must get it right or 2017 will be e difficult election year.

The choice is theirs to make.

It needs to be said: if you lost an election recently, whether you are a Big Fish or not, please do not look for a backdoor into the game. Your constituents rejected you. Now, we know that you lot have enormous egos that are not easily bruised; but if the people you had tirelessly represented in Parliament or in those dens of iniquity we called local authorities refused to re-elect you, or thought that you had hitched your wagon to the wrong train, it is time you took time off from the rigours of political life and did something more constructive with your time. Set up a foundation to teach orphans to yodel or something. Just stay out of our hair for the next five years. Perhaps absence will make hearts grow fonder and we may give you another chance to peddle your wares in the corridors of power once again.

A fiction is being perpetuated that when Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto form their next administration, it is necessary for them to blend their Cabinet with both experienced hands and non-political types to ensure "stability." I say, "Horse-shit!" A casual examination of the failed politicians hovering in their ante-chambers reveals men and women who not only failed to do much for their hapless constituents, some are yet to fully unsully their reputations for graft and other forms of official skullduggery.

When Kenyans ratified their constitution in 2010, one of their key objectives was to clean up the Executive branch, to weed out the serial abusers of public office. The foundation of Chapter Six of the Constitution was the desire to keep out sundry thieves, liars and murderers out of the national Executive, and to ensure that the men and women we look to for leadership and guidance did not do their duty with one eye out for the tax-man or the anti-corruption investigators because they had their hands in the national cookie jar. It will be an insult of the highest order for the President-elect and the Deputy President-elect to even countenance the nomination of men and women whom the electorate do not deem fit to hold public office to positions in their Cabinet. If they must recycle anyone, it must be done for the noblest of reasons, that is, the man or women whom they wish to nominate must have some particular skill-set that cannot be found anywhere else in the Republic. Some of those hoping for a comeback tour are yet to explain themselves regarding accusations egregious abuse of office, grand corruption or incompetence.

We have a chance to re-shape the national Executive in order to achieve the lofty ideals contained in Vision 2030 or the Jubilee manifesto. To succeed in these objectives, we must look to men and women who have proven themselves in their respective fields, whether in the public or private sector. When nominated and appointed, they must not only know their stuff, they must also command the loyalty of the armies of public officers they will have charge over. If Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto, in their zeal to "balance" their Cabinet and their desire for stability choose old hacks long rejected by the people who know them best, then we have much to fear as we move forward into the new constitutional dispensation. They have a chance to be great. It is for them to choose how history will look at their record.

Put them out of business.

Much has been said about the violence on social media over the CORD petition and the Jubilee's response. Many cite the use of tribal stereotypes to attack in the most gruesome language those who have a different opinion. Leading members of Kenya's civil society, such as the Archbishop of Nairobi, John Cardinal Njue, and the moderator of the NCCK, Canon Peter Karanja, have asked the authorities, especially the NCIC, to take stern action against those spewing messages of hate on social media sites, such as this author's facebook page.

It does not escape our minds that in 2007 and 2008 the decision of the Electoral Commission of Kenya was but the spark need to light the conflagration that had been primed for months. When Raila Odinga and his ODM cohort called for "mass action", they may not have meant rioting, looting and general mayhem, but that is what occurred. But the call for mass action, on its own, would not have had the effect that it did if the people loyal to the ODM banner had not been primed with unconfirmed rumours that Mwai Kibaki was determined to use all means, legitimate and underhanded, to steal the election from Raila Odinga or those that claimed that if Raila Odinga was elected, he would set about arresting every single prominent Kikuyu politician on trumped-up charges in retaliation for some unspecified slight from the Kikuyu community against his family's honour.

In 2007 we did not have armies of civil society types preaching peace; indeed, many of them seem to have closed shop in anticipation of a smooth transition as had happened in 2002. In 2013, we were determined to learn the proper lessons of the past. It seems we did not; how else can one explain the existence of such virulent messengers of hate on the internet as are being tracked by the NCIC and the National Police Service?

One reason why the last crisis was so devastating is because a large cohort of the youth were out of work and without viable prospects. Things have improved somewhat, but not by much. Added to the fact that many unemployed youth have access to even cheaper internet bandwidth and the problem of what to do with their idle hands remains as crucial as possible. Of course, not all the purveyors of hate online are unemployed; it is now evident that many are employed, some in very senior positions, and they all have an axe to grind in the anonymous world of the blogger or social netizen.

Whoever succeeds Mwai Kibaki has a nettle he must grapple with if he is to have a successful five years. What to do with the idle hands of an educated but unemployed, and perhaps unemployable, youth population should occupy his every waking moment. Many have scoffed at the Jubilee promise of a billion shillings in loans and grants for every county for the youth and other special interest groups. But given the modest success of youth-oriented funds and programmes in the past, this is an idea worth pursuing. It is evident that the expansion of employment and income-generating activities for the youth will not be achieved only through private sector initiatives or public sector one; it is a combined effort by all major players in Kenya that will ensure that the idle hands of our educated youth do not become the devil's workshop of this nation's enemies, whether internal or external.

To defeat the committed hatemongers online, what we require is not more prosecutions or arrests, but better ideas and stronger arguments. Clearly, the NCIC and its fellow-travellers are incapable of engaging with our nation's enemies at this level so it falls down to the likes of you and me, whether we agree with each other or not, to take on the poison keyboards with better arguments of our own. We all agree that Kenya comes first. So while you peddle your side's argument, and I peddle mine, we should at least put out of business those incapable of putting our nation first. Show them to be the liars and charlatans they are. Perhaps they will cut and run. I am a Kenyan thus I am an optimist!

Tough shit, Magwanga et al!

There is a group of former MPs, now re-elected, who seem to think that the sun shines out of their asses. They have gotten it into their heads that the behaviour of the Ninth and Tenth Parliaments, and even that of the Eighth, that was tolerated by the long-suffering peoples of Kenya, will be tolerated with the swearing in of the First Parliament of the Second Republic, that is, the Eleventh Parliament. They threaten to mobilise their colleagues in Kenya's only second bicameral Parliament to "renegotiate" their pay and allowances with the Salaries and Remuneration Commission. They argue that the new regime proposed, and published in the Kenya Gazette, by the Commission places elected representatives in the national government in a "compromising position and [makes] them miserable personalities."

How any Kenyan, let alone one who claims to speak for his people, could sneer at half-a-million shillings in pay-and-perks as demeaning beggars belief. Their argument that they have responsibilities in their constituencies that demand higher salaries no longer washes with the great unwashed. The huddled masses may not be the most sophisticated political theorists in the world, but we now know that there is a link between the competence of our elected representatives and the level of development where we live in squalid splendor. Messrs Magwanga, Baiya, Chanzu and Ng'eno are proof positive that it is only the will of the people that will keep our elected representatives from ripping us off every chance they get.

Not even this author believe that representing the people is something one should do for free. Even in the so-called developed world, an elected representative wishes a life of relative prestige and luxury. The scandals rocking the Palace of Westminster regarding its MPs expenses reminds us that the colour of ones skin is not a guarantee of honesty or integrity. However, to allow Magwanga et al to keep taking us for all we've got and then some is tolerance too far. We drew the line in the sand when we overwhelmingly ratified the Constitution of Kenya in August 2010. We reaffirmed our position when we supported the creation of the Salaries and Remuneration Commission. Indeed, when they sought our opinions on whether their proposals were fair just before the general election, we were adamant that the cuts had not gone far enough; we wanted more. Mr Magwanga and his colleagues need to be reminded that we have weighed and measure them, and the departed-and-unlamented Tenth Parliament and we have found them wanting in every respect. This is not the time for any survivors of the carnage that was the general election to attempt to flex their muscles at our expense. If Mr Magwanga and his colleagues cannot live within a half-a-million shillings means, tough shit!

The four represent a dying concept of representative government, one that had been encouraged over 40 years of KANU hegemonic rule. That the elected representatives were responsible for hand-outs rather than leadership had become an entrenched custom that has proven surprisingly resilient. But even in the deepest recesses of our greed, we know that it is an ineffective way of governing or leading. The SRC's pay-cut for State officers is just the first step. The next is for all of them to learn how to lobby and connive and maneuvre to get their constituents what they need from the three arms of government and all its agencies. In 2017, when we next send these representatives through the fiery fires of a general election, those who will survive will be those who know that it is not a fat cheque that turns them into respected personalities; it is the quality of leadership they offer and how far they lead us out of the quagmires of our suffering.

Dr Kidero, you are living your test...

It rained yesterday. Some parts of Nairobi carried on as before. Some parts of Nairobi came to a halt. If you are one of the few lucky ones who lives in Nairobi's well-planned, relatively speaking, and well-serviced, again, relatively speaking, leafy suburbs, you drove to work with nary a thought to the vast majority that had to contend with jacked-up PSV fares, over-flowing drains, over-flowing sewers and extremely muddy pavements and roads. This is my message to Evans Kidero, governor-elect of Nairobi: make life livable for those who don't have the luxury of a regular pay-cheque, private transport or functional municipal services, and you'll do more to turn Nairobi into an economic powerhouse than all your bond issues ever will.

An interesting article appeared in the Daily Nation some years ago. The author's argument was that the middle classes in Nairobi, and other urban centers in Kenya, are heavily subsidised by the men and women we casually mistreat on a day-to-day basis. The men who stand post outside our homes, the women who cook for us, clean our homes and look after our children live in some of the most squalid conditions simply because we refuse to pay them a fair wage. If we were to pay them the true market wage that they deserve, one of two possibilities arise: the middle classes would stop paying for other luxuries, driving down the amount of spare cash in circulation, reducing imports and manufacturing, etc; or they'd sacrifice these services, leading to increased unemployment and its attendant social consequences.

It is a fiction that a Kenyan government is on the way to rescue our servants; this is only something that can be achieved by a well-run government in Nairobi. The City Council was once the pride of the nation; today it is a by-word for corruption, insensitivity, cruelty, callousness and outright thievery. Before you settle into your new office at City Hall, pray take a walk through the City Hall Annex at the corner of Muindi Mbingu Street and Kaunda Street. This will tell you all you need to know about what musty be done to revive the City of Nairobi to its bygone days of glory.

Many of the men and women who work for us, whether at home or in our places of work, have to do with the very worst in municipal services. Their families suffer with them, especially their children. The shambles in service delivery to their residential areas is a principle reason why their share of disposable income in the grand economic scheme of things remains small. To reduce the share of their income they spend on healthcare, transport or security is not rocket science; it is only the will to invest in their well-being that successive city councils have lacked. You have the opportunity to invest in improved transport management, sewers, drains and open (green) spaces in these areas to see not only the quality of their lives improve, but their level of productivity rise too. You only need to seize the opportunity. You have promised to work for the people of Nairobi. Let us test the sincerity of your pledges.

It's the economy, stupid.

Very few analysts expect Raila Odinga's challenge of the electoral results of the presidential election to succeed. All are focused on whether Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, president-elect and deputy president-elect, are able to unite the nation in the aftermath of a heavily contested general election. Especially because of the tribal tyranny of numbers, Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto may find it difficult to unite Kenyans as they embark on what is surely one of the most fraught presidencies in Kenya's history. While they fight to clear their names in the wake of their indictments at the International Criminal Court, they will have to contend with a political environment that may remain perilous for months, perhaps years, to come. Their administration will stand or fall depending on how they not only manage the onerous task of fighting their indictments at the ICC but also how accommodating and inclusive their policies, both political and otherwise, are.

How they unite the nation has been the subject of multiple commentaries in the Sunday papers. I propose that they use their economic policies as the lever to unite the fractious peoples of Kenya. Today, Kenya is in an unenviable position. Despite the fact that there are multiple institutes of higher learning, white-collar employment has not kept pace with the numbers of youth graduating from these institutes. Mwai Kibaki's administration, admittedly starting from a low point, struggled to create the environment conducive enough to the creation of such jobs. Uhuru Kenyatta, while he was Finance minister, could only come up with short-term blue-collar jobs in his stimulus package. This is nothing to sniff at; at a time when the population of unemployed youth, both skilled and unskilled, was rising inexorably, his Kazi Kwa Vijana programme and other youth-oriented programmes, ensured that for some portion of the year, Kenya's youth would have a source of income.

The challenge the two face today is surely how to ensure that the gains bequeathed by Mwai Kibaki's departing administration are safeguarded and used as a platform for greater job creation. Even without a commodities-driven economy, Kenya is still the most open economic environment in the greater Eastern Africa; the numbers out of Ethiopia and the Sudan mask a state-oriented economic policy that is surely to come unstuck when the political establishments in those countries suffer setbacks in their holds over their peoples in the face of a liberalising global economy. The same is true, to a large extent, of the economies of Uganda, South Sudan and Rwanda.

Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto must a pursue a policy that will empower employers, especially in the manufacturing sector, to expand production and, thereby, expand employment, both skilled blue-collar and white-collar. The emphasis, though, must be to encourage greater local consumption of manufactured goods, and greater export of value-added commodities and other goods. Kenya should not remain hostage to a raw-commodities-driven export economy coupled with greater import of manufactured goods. This will entail a mix of public stimuluses of the manufacturing sector, including tax incentives, as well as a gradual draw-down of the scale of public intervention in the sector. The overall goal should be to shrink the size of the State, whether at national or county level, and the expansion of the private sector. It is the private sector that must be the driver of economic growth, not the public sector.

To achieve this, their economic policies must include a complete overhaul of the regulation of labour and better enforcement of the law. Their administration must not pick winners in the market-place; instead, it must ensure that the playing field is level and that all employers play by the same rules. To achieve this, the two must resist the urge to manipulate the Judiciary or the market-place by relying on poorly thought out tax policies. Robinson Njeru Githae, Mr Kenyatta's successor at the Treasury, made many mistakes in his tax policies. He frequently capitulated to vested interests out to make a fast shilling at the expense of the overall economy. One of his proposals to tax bankers is being challenged in the High Court; analysts expect the Government to lose this fight.

If Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto wish to unite the peoples of Kenya, then their policies must ensure that more and more Kenyans enter gainful employment than not. Their economic policies must ensure that more and more employers hire more and more youth than has been the case of late. They must also pursue policies that will turn Kenya into a values-laden export economy, though that comes with is own set of risks. It is the economy that is their best chance of fashioning a lasting legacy, much as Mwai Kibaki's infrastructure development-driven economy will be his.

Sovereignty?

Eric Ng'eno rightly celebrates the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as Kenya's fourth President (Donors will have to respect sovereign boundaries or risk being sidelined. Daily Nation, Saturday, March 9, 2013.) But Mr Ng'eno focuses on the wrong lesson to be drawn from Mr Kenyatta's and Mr Ruto's election. While it is obvious that the West would have preferred a Raila Odinga victory, and that they did all in their considerable power to shift the ballot in Mr Odinga's favour, the lesson we must draw from the Kenyatta victory is not that Kenyans have re-asserted their sovereignty; it is that Kenyans have abandoned all pretense at fealty to the rule of law.

We must all agree that the indictments of the two at the International Criminal Court was not a bar to them offering themselves for election. The loud campaign against their candidacy was rightly stymied by the Judiciary. But it is instructive that a large proportion of those that cast their ballot for Jubilee did it with the express purpose of "protecting" Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto from the clutches of the ICC prosecutor. That is how they understood the situation and that was their motivation for choosing Jubilee over CORD.

What seems to have slipped the minds of many, including Mr Ng'eno, is that millions of Kenyans are yet to receive justice for the crimes perpetrated against them. Thousands of Kenyans were murdered; we seem to have forgotten this. Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were driven from their homes in the dead of night and their properties either destroyed or unlawfully expropriated; we seem to have forgotten this. Hundreds of thousands of women and children suffered unutterable violations; we seem to have forgotten this. And in the bright new dawn of a Jubilee jubilation, we seem to remind them that regardless of the outcome of the general election, and the presidential contest, their pursuit of justice must play second fiddle to the test of wills between Kenyan "sovereignists" and foreign powers.

Mr Ng'eno argues that the past fifty years has seen Kenya play second fiddle to world powers, giving up its sovereignty bit by bit until it has been retaken by the Jubilee victory. Mr Ng'eno glosses over the fact that Kenyan sovereignty is on paper only; it is only our constitution that declares it. But the reality is that we cannot escape the fact that Kenya is a minor player in a globalised world; when the World Bank and the IMF and other "development partners" attach conditions on their "grants" and "aid", how sovereign are we?

I put it to you that the point of international relations is trade and the nation with the most to sell and the least to buy enjoys greater power than a nation that finds itself in the opposite camp. Jubilee's flip response to threats of consequences by the West was to hint at a deeper relationship with the East, especially China in the style of the Republic of the Sudan. Even a casual examination of the relationship between Kenya and the People's Republic of China shows that it is deeply unequal; we need them more than they need us. For proof, one need only look at the moves China is making in Kenya with regards to newly discovered deposits of oil and gas in parts of the country; China has studiously avoided making any play for them, leaving the field open to companies from the West. China's decision to fund major infrastructure developments are done with an eye to southern Ethiopia and the fledgling state of South Sudan. Kenya is merely a means to a Chinese end. Even China's covert participation in AMISOM's pacification of Somalia is done with an eye to ensuring that its major investments in South Sudan and Ethiopia are free from perennial political risk in the Horn of Africa.

If Kenya had the capacity to demonstrate its sovereignty in it truest form, it would not have allowed the rich and powerful to rely on their wealth and power to escape the clutches of justice. Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto are yet to be convicted of anything to do with the 2007/08 conflagration; but the fact that they were indicted by a foreigner speaks volumes to our claim of sovereignty. It would have been less stinging if the Establishment had properly investigated the crimes, and prosecuted those not indicted by the ICC. As it is, in the fifth year of seeking justice, victims of post-election violence have nothing to show except chest-thumping by two men accused of committing such horrific crimes. This is the sovereignty that the likes of Eric Ng'eno treasure?

Manage the pain.

Listen, when you get home tonight you're going to be confronted by the instinct to drink alone. Trust that instinct. Manage the pain. Don't try to be a hero.
The West Wing, Season 4, Episode 10

 Save for Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, the numbers have been a harsh verdict from the peoples of Kenya. Months, sometimes even years, have been spent by candidates trying to woo Kenyans to their causes. Peter Kenneth, the insurgent from Murang'a, came with a pledge to apply the managerial skills he displayed in the management of the Gatanga CDF to the national stage. Kenyans thought not; his margin of loss should be a cautionary tale for the so-called technocrat-politician. We may deserve an efficient and effective government, but we are easily seduced by the silver tongues of the true politicians.

Martha Karua promised to be the broom that would sweep the Augean stables that are Kenya's politics of all the muck that has accumulated in fifty years. Kenyans only remembered her hard-eyed defense of Mwai Kibaki's re-election five years ago. Many from the Mt Kenya region will never forgive her for insisting that Uhuru Kenyatta could not stand in these elections because of his indictment at the International Criminal Court. James ole Kiyiapi attempted to bring a professorial mien to the political arena. He is now punch-line. Kenyans do not want teachers to abandon their classrooms for the starry lights of high office. Paul Muite, despite his years in the trenches fighting the Second liberation wars that Kenyans are benefiting from should simply have tried to recapture his Kikuyu seat. Mohammed Abduba Dida is the only one who comes out looking good. No one thought he would prevail against the front-runners; he has acquitted himself well against established names and known political figures.

The numbers are brutal. They are even more so for Raila Odinga. All his sacrifices for the people of Kenya and all the cunning and conniving to get to where he is today, only to be upstaged by a person he considers unfit for office must surely sting. If the trend continues to the inevitable denouement, Mr Odinga could very well hang his saddle and retire back to Siaya. Since the attempted coup of 1982, Mr Odinga has built a political career that led only to one destination: the presidency. If he loses this his third attempt at the brass ring, he has no fall-back, no Plan B. He is done. He could attempt to be Uhuru Kenyatta's bete noir like Kizza Besigye is to Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, but that would be beneath him or the legacy he surely has from his years in Kenyan politics. If he loses, he should withdraw gracefully from the arena and leave the muck to Younger Turks with the stamina and cunning he has surely taught them.

Uhuru Kenyatta and, by extension, his running-mate William Ruto, must surely feel like the cats that swallowed the canaries. Should Mr Kenyatta be sworn in, their strategy will have paid off. They argued that their plight at the ICC was a conspiracy to keep them from the presidency. At least half of the voters who cast their ballots for them seem to agree. They argued that it was time for a generational change in Kenyan politics. Half the voters seem to agree. They promised change and it seems they will be given the opportunity to strut their stuff. There is nothing as heady as the adulation of millions of people. The two must take care not to let their victory go to their heads, for therein lies destruction.

Should Mr Kenyatta be elected Kenya's fourth President, our experiment with the ICC will be in for significant challenges. It is the only political crisis that could hamstring the nascent Kenyatta administration. How the two manage their indictments whole at the same time fighting such serious charges will either make or break this nation. They have the choice of fully co-operating with the Court or taking the path that Sudan's Omar el Bashir is determined to follow to its conclusion. One way or the other, Kenya is in for very interesting times. Of course, their legal maneuvres may yet scuttle the ICC trials. If this happens, then Kenyans will expect them to keep their campaign promises in some fashion.

But for the losers, their future is stark, especially if they did not have credible plans for the losses they are suffering this week. Their first order of business should be to salve their political wounds the best they can. I would advise them to have a large bottle of vodka on ice for they really, really need to manage the pain of their humiliating defeat.

It's all about choice.

Going by the posts on social media sites, God finds Himself in an enviable position. He is called upon to assure victory for one presidential candidate over the other. Many are claiming that the next president is God's choice and that Kenyans should go along to get along. He is also called upon to guarantee peace, and future success to the next president. I think He has better things to do...like drawing up a list of the naughty and nice, to use a past phrase, so that on the Day of Judgment...well, you get the drift.

Instead of calling on the Almighty to intervene in a minor political contest, perhaps we should ask for His guidance as we form our next government. This nation faces challenges that have persisted for decades. Child mortality is still frighteningly high. As are deaths during childbirth and poverty levels. Kenyans routinely slaughter each other over land, grazing rights and political offices. Education is not worth the word in Kenya; we can barely stack up against the Asian Tigers let alone the best of the best in the West. Debilitating diseases still stalk the land.

We have demonstrated a staggering lack of civic-mindedness over the past fifty years and in the year of our Jubilee, perhaps, it is time to call time on the apathy and neglects of the past. We must seize the bull by the horns and tackle the issues that hold us back. Debating with the leading lights of the middle classes, one is persuaded that the corruption, cheating, lies and murders that have coloured our governance in the past are things that can be overcome. Perhaps, with a new president and a new constitution to implement, this is the time when we take these issues, one by one, and sort them out not just for our sake, but for that of our children and theirs in the decades to come.

A visitor from Mars would be mistaken for thinking that the most important choice we have to make is between two very similar presidential candidates. The truth of the matter is that we have more difficult choices to make. In rewarding the men and women who toil in the public service, we must choose between paying them and paying for their tools. In the security of the peoples of Kenya, we must choose between a draconian application of the Penal Code and negotiating with men and women who would seek to do us harm. In educating our children, we would choose between making education free or making it of the highest quality possible. The choices are many and complex. How we choose will determine whether we have a short term or long term view of the viability of our nation.

Even today as uncertainty plagues the outcome of the presidential contest, we must not lose sight of the things that make us one. It cannot be reduced to a National Anthem or a National Flag; we must all, somehow , rise up to the occasion and see ourselves as one nation and one people. For this to happen, we must not jealously guard the allocations that will be made from the national Treasury; we must acknowledge that some are more deserving of State largesse than others and ensure that when that largesse is dispensed, it is done fairly and honestly. If we do not, then it matters not who the man at the top is. We will, sooner or later, revert to self-destructive behaviors and ruin the present and the future we so desperately deserve. If we must call on the Almighty, if at all, let us call on Him to help us do this.

The count is all that matters now.

As I write, the presidential ballots are being counted and Uhuru Kenyatta, scion of Kenya's first Prime Minister, first President and the father of the nation, Jomo Kenyatta, is leading Raila Odinga by around ten points. Raila Odinga, Kenya's second Prime Minister and scion of Jomo Kenyatta's first Vice-President and perennial bete noir, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, is surely hoping to overhaul Mr Kenyatta's lead in the hours ahead as more and more ballots are counted and more and more counties transmit their figures. To say that we are anxiously awaiting the final results is like saying the sky is blue or kittens are cute: stating the obvious!

But the decision is already made; all that remains is for the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission to confirm the figures and announce who will succeed Mwai Kibaki. We all hope that the election will not be forced into a run-off. It is the way Kenyans voted that is instructive. Month after month of exhortations to peace,Kenyans voted peacefully, save for violent acts intended to disrupt the polls in Mombasa, Kilifi and Garissa where policemen and a polling clerk were murdered in cold blood. The Fourth witnessed long queues, some going back four kilometres, at polling stations. In these queues, Kenyans were stoic and patient, intent on proving to the naysayers at CNN and the BBC wrong about the peaceful elections we were holding. Even despite scaremongering reports by these international media outlets leading up to the polls, Kenyans largely demonstrated that we had learnt the lessons of 2008 and would not need to re-learn them any time soon.

Despite the shambles in the IEBC organisation of the polls - the long queues an busted Electronic Voter Identification Devices - these elections are a success. The IEBC was quick to admit the challenges it was facing; it was even quicker to prescribe solutions that many accepted and applied. It was forthcoming with information when requested; officials did not hide from unpleasant truths or hard questions. The phrase "beefed up" took a new meaning in the context of security preparedness; despite the murders of policemen in Mombasa and Kilifi, the National Police Service and the security establishment have acquitted themselves admirably. There was no repeat of the 2007 claims that Administration Police officers were deployed as agents for one camp or the other. It seems Raila Odinga may have scuttled whatever nascent plans existed to "rig" these elections. Kenyans demonstrated that they had inhered the peace messages of the past three years; hate speech was eerily absent from social media sites and no fear-inducing text messages were sent out to rile up the voters. Even the talking heads on TV have tried their hardest not to appear as overtly, spitefully partisan though the obvious joy of some and bitter despondency of other at the presidential tallying shows that we still have some way to go before we can agree to disagree without being disagreeable.

All that remains is for Kenyans to receive the results without going out of their minds. Last time round we didn't trust the late Samuel Kivuitu's numbers. This time we must place our faith that Ahmed Issack Hassan and his Commission have done all that they must to secure the integrity of the tallying and transmission process. Those who would challenge Mr Hassan's numbers must approach Dr Mutunga's Judiciary; it has demonstrated that it is no one's poodle and that it'll jealously defend its independence. It's up to the counting now.

This is it.

The story that we keep reminding ourselves - and keep being reminded of - is that five years ago Kenyans went to the polls and then tried to destroy the country because the polls were neither free nor fair. None seems to think that the narrative, five years down the line, has changed much. The received wisdom is that Kenya is in a 'fragile' state and if the general election results, especially those of the presidential contest, are doubted by any of the leading candidates, the crisis may be beyond the efforts of Kenya's development partners, the African Union or the sainted Kofi Annan. Much has been predicted about these elections. Much may be wrong about those predictions.

The elephant in the room is that these elections, at least from the politicians' calculations, has been fought on the basis of the strength in numbers one tribe has against another. The coalitions and alliances that were crafted as winning strategies by the leading lights of presidential politics have been with an eye to shoring up what is perceived as limited tribal arithmetic. Fevered reporting by legions of Kenyan pressmen has revolved around a pernicious theory: that of the Tyranny of Numbers that posits that the election was won when the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission closed the voters' register. According to Mutahi Ngunyi, a respected political commentator, the Jubilee Alliance that brings together Uhuru Kenyatta's The National Alliance and William Ruto's United Democratic Front on the presidential ballot will defeat the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) because the union between Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement and Kalonzo Musyoka's Wiper Democratic Movement does not command the same tribal numbers that the Jubilee Alliance does. Much newsprint ink has been spilled trying to argue one way or the other that the Tyranny of Numbers theory is flawed or accurate, depending on your political predilections. Those who pooh-pooh the theory do so based on opinion polls, published regularly over the past year.

Opinion polling in Kenya is slowly coming of age. Many 'sophisticated' Kenyans treat them like the Oracles of Delphi, bestowing upon the statistics a mythical power to define the political landscape of the nation. Opinion pollsters have argued that they rely on statistical models that have been proven time and again in proving one thing or the other, or as they like to declaim, to show how the trends are trending. Still, there is much to doubt in the numbers, not least because no one seems to know who has commissioned the polls or what methodologies have been relied on to arrive at the statistical conclusions being published in the press. Because of these and other doubts surrounding the numbers, Kenyans are divided down the middle on whether to place their trust in the numbers or to trust the Tyranny of Numbers theory. Alternative predictions from the statistics are based on whether one has faith in the institutions that will oversee the elections or not.

The IEBC has been lauded, despite much misgiving in some quarters as to its integrity, for the manner in which it has prepared for the elections and the processes and systems it has established to pull off a successful elections. Ahmed Isaack Hassan and his fellow commissioners have worked very hard to portray and image of a united front in their preparations for the elections. But one should not be blinded by the apparent bonhomie by the commissioners; the teething problems the commission endured during the procurement of the Biometric Voter Register paint a frightening picture of an agency that continues to emulate some of the worst habits of the mainstream public service that had brought it low in the peoples' estimations. The public service too has come in for some flak. Accusations that senior members of the public service have been co-opted into the campaigns of this or that coalition have refused to die down despite the emphatic protestations of the Head of the Public Service. Many still remember the damning findings of the Kriegler Commission of the role that the public service played in the conflagration of 2007 and 2008.

The Judiciary, however, under the rather unsettling leadership of Dr Willy Mutunga, the Chief Justice, has somehow managed to redeem itself in the eyes of many Kenyans. Despite some of the missteps of the Chief Justice, the Judiciary has managed to stay above the political fray for the most part. Many Kenyans, and foreigners, are convinced that the Judiciary will play a mediating role if and when electoral disputes arise. In a series of judgments and rulings, the Judiciary has refused to pick favourites in the general election; it has argued, persuasively, that it is up to the peoples of Kenya to make the ultimate choice on The Fourth.

When the Judiciary refused to bar Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto from the ballot, it must have known that the decision would not sit well with some of the more vocal members of the 'human rights' section of civil society. Their demands, regardless of their passion on the subject, were without legal merit. One suspects that they know this but are simply unwilling to admit in in public lest their benefactors think they have gone soft. But the matter of the International Criminal Court indictments of the Jubilee Alliance's ticket is not a conviction. They are accused of heinous crimes. They are yet to stand trial and from the looks f things, Uhuru Kenyatta may yet be tried if the numbers of witnesses recanting rises or the proof relied upon by the Office of the Prosecutor keeps getting successfully challenged by his very able, and expensive, defense team. But make no mistake: in the minds of many Kenyans, the results of the presidential contest are also a referendum on the ICC Question. If the Jubilee ticket wins the contest, it will be seen by many as a vindication of their claims to innocence. If they lose, their political careers may be sunk, never to rise again.

What is notable about these elections has been the almost total absence of politically-motivated violence. Even in the run up to the 2007 general election, Kenyans were engaged in low-level violence that found an outlet in the disputed results. So far, none has argued that continuing clashes in the Tana Delta or the sporadic cattle-rustling incidents that have caused so much death and destruction in parts of the Rift Valley and northern Kenya have had anything to do with the elections. It seems that it is only the wanton destruction of Kenya's wildlife is linked to the general election; it is alleged that the continuing poaching of elephants, lions and rhinos in Kenya's national parks and game reserves is linked to the financing of what is bound t be the most expensive election in Kenya's fifty year history.

Those in the civil society not obsessed with the ICC Question have done a stellar job in "peace-building." Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. Many Kenyans, as indeed their candidates, have pledged to respect the verdict of the people on The Fourth. After all is said and done, Kenyans have the opportunity to prove to the world and to the Western media that continues to scaremonger with wild abandon, the we are a peaceable and peaceful peoples. We have claimed that 2007/08 will never again be our postcard to the world. It is time to put our money where our mouths are.

Work in Progress.

Given the givens, it is almost with relief that we greet the final seven days to the General Election. It has been a harrowing and exhausting three years. Since Mwai Kibaki's government essentially took a leave-from-absence so that members of the Cabinet could campaign, we have been treated to the circus of the damned. Allegations and counter-allegations, accusations and counter-accusations, facts and outright lies have flown ever since the Prime Minister, his two Deputy Prime Ministers, the Vice-President, the former Minister for Justice and several more wannabes decided that they wanted to succeed Mwai Kibaki.

The lack of an ideological debate on the direction the nation should follow has been our biggest loss. While Martha Karua speaks passionately about social democracy, all our remaining presidential candidates are simply preaching from the same sermon. All promise to "fully implement" the Constitution; all promise to "fully implement" Vision 2030; all promise to "wipe out corruption" and uphold the rule of law; all promise to "work with" constitutional commissions and independent offices to ameliorate the suffering of Kenyans; all promise to untangle the Gordian Knot around the Land Question; all promise to keep Kenyans safe; all promise to "grow the economy by double digits; and all promise to be "servant leaders" whatever that means to them.

What they have done, away from the debate podiums, is sling mud at each other with wild abandon. What they have done is to build castles in the air about the changes they will wring out of the Kenyan body politic. Even when faced with the opportunity to spell out their plans in full, they have shied away from doing so. When faced with the opportunity to erase the suspicions in Kenyans' minds about their pasts and their intentions, they have failed to convincingly do so. They have, instead, treated Kenyans to a regurgitation of tactics as old as the Republic without batting an eyelid. Even insurgent campaigns such as Martha Karua's have the whiff of old-school populist tactics that Kenyans should, rightly, be suspicious of.

The second debate was an opportunity for the candidates to spell out their economic plans and to lay the ghosts of "historical land injustices" to rest. They have singularly failed in this endeavour. What is clear that the economy of Kenya is multifaceted and complex to an almost unbelievable scale. Joe Ageyo and Uduak Amimo failed to address the elephant in the room: how Kenya's economy would survive the dire warnings of sanctions and whatnot should the Jubilee ticket be elected. They also failed to to persuade the candidates to share their plans regarding the continuing spectre of millions of Kenyans without jobs or the prospects of any. Perhaps it was too much to hope for; Kenyans, after all, have been "programmed" to see political contests only in the context of one tribe against 41 others. This is the be all and end all of presidential politics in Kenya. It has been so for the past two decades. Kenyans do not seem to be tiring from it. But from the questions fielded during the debate - however unsatisfactorily - Kenyans seem to be stirring slightly and asking hard questions that demand hard answers.

What the debates reveal is that it is 2017 that will truly redefine the way elections are conducted. The mistakes we witnessed in 2012 and 2013 regarding the preparations for the general election must be addressed at the next general election. Party primaries must be organised around credible timetables. The electoral law must be enforced without fear or favour: candidates must not be allowed to hop willy-nilly from one party to the next looking for the best chance to be on the ballot. Party manifestos must be clearer about the foundations of all the promises being bandied about. The debate moderators must force the candidates to spell out clearly their plans and clear up doubts about their pasts. And Kenyans must finally break away from seeing themselves during elections as members of this tribe or that. This election proves that the progress of civilising and maturing our politics is far from done. When it is done, perhaps, we will give The West, the Asian Tigers and the BRICS a run for their dollars. Or Euros. Or yuans.

Time to choose.

Despite the results of half-a-dozen opinion polls, and largely because of the Tyranny of Numbers hypothesis, Kenyans are in the grip of a political crisis. Whatever else we may discuss or decide in the future, it is time that we admitted that we are yet to mature as a democratic polity; our immaturity is starkly demonstrated by the absence of strong institutions, nuanced political debate, and an atavistic selfishness that refuses to acknowledge nationhood or nationalism of any sort.

We have blamed colonialism for many of our present challenges; without the divide-and-conquer strategy of the colonial administration, Kenya would not have had to identify its peoples by tribe. But it is time to admit that the colonial bugbear has not been responsible for the past 40 years of discord and animosity. It is us, and our blind veneration of our political leaders, who are to blame for the deep schisms experienced amongst Kenya's forty-two peoples. That is not all. The battle between Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga for the soul of the nation, whether it would take care of the least of its peoples or whether it would make the fatcats fatter, defined the period between 1969 and 1978 as nothing else ever will.

We might be the beneficiaries of the legacies left behind by Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kung'u Karumba, Bildad Kaggia, Kenneth Matiba, George Anyona or even Masinde Muliro, but in our hearts of hearts, we espouse the poisonous legacy of the Kenyatta Era. We place loyalty to an individual - flaws notwithstanding - and to the tribal collective - whether we benefit personally or not - above all else. The chatteratti in Nairobi are free to declaim to the waiting ears of western development partners about our nationhood and to use the Safari 7s team as proof of our nationalism, but we all know the awful truth: in the hierarchy of loyalties, we pay fealty to self, family, clan, tribe and tribal chief before we even consider nation. Even those of us who have the benefit of a cosmopolitan heritage fond it very difficult to buch traditions that have defined the nation for the past half-century. We are all victims of a poison that was spread by a man whose been dead this past thirty-five years.

In the here and now, we all fear that despite the efforts of the past six months at promoting peace and reconciliation, despite the apparent bonhomie between The Hague Alliance, the post-election scenario will be determined by which ethnic combination is determined to "measure its strength" against the dominant one. We have a sorry record of post-poll calm; even the much-celebrated 2002 election was not without acts of violence and prolonged post-poll tension. It is only Mwai Kibaki's magnanimous decision to let Moi be that allowed the nation to move on to...Anglo-Leasing, Triton, KKV and FPE scams.

Indeed, if Kenyans are looking for an ideology to rally behind, corruption makes the most sense. As a nation, as tribes, as clans, as families and as individuals, not one can claim not to be divorced from the reality of the relationship between the State and the people and amongst the peoples of Kenya. Corruption is the glue that holds this nation together. It is the raison d'être of the State and our government. It is the reason why we are willing to murder and maim at political contests: if we know that a particular group has spent too long a time at the trough of public truffles, and they seem prepared to perpetuate their stay, we will demonstrate our displeasure in creatively violent ways.

So perhaps it is time we debunked the argument that we are hobbled by tribalism; we are not. It is corruption that hobbles our forward movement as a nation and the sooner we find a way of ensuring that every body gets an opportunity at the trough, violence is all but guaranteed before, during and after the polls. Of course, ordinary Kenyans may have already decided that they have paid too high a price for corruption. In that case, the polls offer them the best chance to demonstrate their new found resolve. If they can elect men and women who live for the peoples of Kenya - all forty-two tribes - perhaps we can steal a march on the Asian Tigers and the up-and-coming BRICS.

Without trust...

I am reliably informed that nappy rash is one of the principal causes of night-long infant discomfort characterised by screaming-and-sobbing by both the infant and its at-wits-end parents. Kenya is definitely going through a nappy rush moment. I am again reliably informed that the causes of nappy rash are frequently irritants that got into the folds of skin hidden underneath nappies (for those modern-day parents used to disposable diapers, you need to speak to an older generation of parents to know where I am coming from). In Kenya's case, the causes of its irritation are frequently presumed to be politicians and the riff-raff that holds up their skirts as they shit on the rest of us. Perhaps it is time Kenyans confronted the awful truth that politicians have very little to do with our nappy rash moment; if we took time to stare in the mirror, we would be confronted by the reason why Kenya is marking time while some Asian nations are turning into tigers and conquering the world.

It is amazing how fast and far the fetishisation of our constitution has gone. It is now being held up as an idol to be worshipped by one and all; and it is incomprehensible that one or two recalcitrant Kenyans do not worship at the Baal-like altar of the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. It is quoted at every opportunity; it is held up as the one true thing to bind us all into an ever closer polity and nation. Even the Soldiers of Christ have not been left out of the veneration of the Constitution or its high priests, including the Chief Justice and his biggest boosters such as the Commissioners of the CIC, the KNHCR, the CAJ or the IEBC. But the rank-and-file of Kenya's new faith lack one basic quality that would make their religion a force to reckon with: trust.

The message has gone out loud and clear that our faith is now constitutionalism and its bible is our barely three-years' old constitution and that the high priests of the faith are the likes of the Chief Justice, the leaders of the Second Liberation and key Commissions and independent offices that espouse the "spirit" of the Constitution and who are unafraid to declare their faith before one and all. What we refuse to acknowledge, even to our  co-religionists, is that despite the 85,000+ words of hope, the Constitution has failed to engender trust in anyone or anything or any institution. It is fashionable to lay this sorry state of affairs at the feet at that odious tribe called politicians, but the harsh truth is that we all have a hand in this. We have tried to use our ethnic diversity as a multiplier of the ills of politics, and loaded poverty into the mix to explain not just the lack of trust but the violence it seems to generate every time there is a close political contest.

Since Section 2A of the former Constitution was repealed in 1991, Kenya has suffered political violence at every general election. Even the triumphal destruction of Moi's succession plans in 2002 were not unaccompanied by violence; we just pretended that the ends justified the  means, especially after Uhuru Kenyatta, allegedly President Moi's "Project," conceded defeat to Mwai Kibaki and his NARC cohort. With the repeal of Section 2A, Kenyans were no longer required to be members of the "ruling" party; they retreated, rather swiftly, into personality-driven "special purpose vehicles" we like to think of as political parties. The Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, may not have jumped into and out of many political parties, but his journey to within sniffing distance of the presidency has been via FORD, FORD-K, NDP KANU, LDP, NARC and, now, ODM. He is hardly alone; since 1992, many Kenyan politicians have persuaded themselves that electoral victory is only possible if one is in the "right" bus (as Kiraitu Murungi would have it) and the spate of formation and dissolution of parties has been staggering; not even the Constitution has stemmed the feeling that the right "bus" is the the only requisite for a successful political career.

Now, we the people, sovereign we may be, but we do not give two hoots about the needs of the people from across the ridge; indeed we don't really care for the people on our side of the ridge. It is for this reason that just as political buses seem to rise and fall with the certainty of night-and-day, so too do faith-based organisations, primarily Christian church denominations with bewildering names (Helicopter Ministry of Christ being one of the more benign), seem to erupt, especially when there is a political rally round the corner. It also seems the time when more and more young men and women engage in violent crime, more and more tycoons seem to steal ever greater sums from their clients, customers, shareholders or the State...the list is endless. As a result, we trust very few among us and those we do have to prove it each and every time. We can fetishise the Constitution and constitutional institutions all we want, but without trust among Kenyans, disappointment awaits us down the road to full implementation.

Save counties from tribalist assassins.

It speaks to our foibles that some candidates for the office of county governor are unhappy with the interim officials appointed by the Transitional Authority. They demand that the process be reviewed and their "input" be taken into consideration. They claim that there is likely to be discord in the county government because they do not know under what terms or conditions these officers have been hired, or what their mandates will be once the county governments come to life on March Fifth.

These candidates must surely take their cue from the Grand Coalition Government, in which President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga "shared" power and each "appointed" half the Cabinet and half the Permanent Secretaries to "represent the interests of their parties", PNU and ODM. It may have been the logical choice to share power by sharing out positions in the Cabinet; it was illogical and downright stupid to share out what amount to civil service jobs among the President's and Prime Minister's cronies and confidants. The Cabinet, despite being a constitutional institution, is really a political one and the choice of Ministers is a political choice. But the office of Permanent Secretary should not be a political one; its principle role is to turn policy into programmes for the well-being of the nation, not the interests of a political party. This cancer, it seems, is being exported to the counties and it will have deleterious effects on the governance of Kenya's brand-new counties.

The intervention by gubernatorial candidates in the appointment of public officers is unconstitutional. The Constitution esteems diversity over localism, and counts on merit as the bedrock of an effective delivery of public services and goods to the long-suffering peoples of Kenya. These principles should not be undermined by the harebrained ideas birthed by the odious Coalition Government formed in 2008. Indeed, the record of the coalition in delivering effective and efficient services to the peoples of Kenya is marked by disappointment, discord and acrimony the likes of which were last witnessed during the crisis of 2007 and 2008. Kenyans simply cannot allow governors to tread the same waters the President and Prime Minister have over the past 5 years.

No county in Kenya is entirely made up of one ethnic group; most are cosmopolitan to various degrees. Nairobi is the most cosmopolitan in Kenya and this explains why Dr Evans Kidero, Jimnah Mbaru and Ferdinand Waititu have not weighed in on the public officers appointed by the Transitional Authority. Even the ethnic strongholds of Central Kenya or the North Rift are not solely composed of Kikuyus or Kalenjins; members of other communities live and play a role in the development of these counties. For example, members of the Kenyan Asian community are to be found practically in every county in Kenya. Are they to be locked out of the management of the affairs of these counties simply because as a percentage of the total national population they amount to no more than 4 to 5%? Or take Kenyan Somalis. They are an up-and-coming community that has been traditionally confined to the undeveloped swathes of Kenya's erstwhile Northern Frontier Province. They have managed to thrive despite the odds stacked against them and are to be found in many counties in Kenya running trucking companies and other vibrant business ventures. Many Kenyans of different ethnicities have had opportunity to grace the various "Garissa Lodges" operated by the members of the Kenyan Somali community. It would be grossly unfair if they too were to be locked out from the county public services in counties where they are not politically dominant simply because of their relatively small population relative to their hosts.

Devolution is meant to be a panacea for the official neglect by the national government, especially of areas that have been allowed to atrophy simply because the powers-that-be in Nairobi consider them to be of no great significance. But the management of neglected counties cannot succeed unless all the communities in those counties feel that they have a say in how their affairs are managed. The seeds of insurgency are usually planted when a group feels marginalised and persecuted. The gubernatorial candidates who cannot grasp this basic fact are best advised to look for jobs in the GEMAs and KAMATUSAs of the future, not as governors of counties.

Judge not...

Why the hectoring tone when evangelicals wish to persuade some to walk the narrow path? The Message is always couched in dire warnings of doom and disaster, not juts for the deaf individual, but to their entire families. Everyday we are threatened with career-ending disaster because we do not believe. We are reminded that our plans will count for nought because we have not publicly invoked the name of the Almighty. We are warned that on the Day of Judgment, our judgment will indeed be harsh and we will suffer damnation for all eternity. We are castigated for being "bad" Christians and that it is all our fault for not turning every day into a day of worship and fellowship. In short, unless we heed The Call, we are not fit for heaven; we are the instruments of the devil and shall suffer a fate worse than death.

Social media, instead of making the conversation more civil, has only made things worse. Now, those active on facebook or Twitter are incessantly bombarded with requests to "like" a page or to "like" a post or else hellfire and brimstone awaits us. It used to be that if one wished to demonstrate their Christian values, they went to church and worshiped with fellow-Christians. Today, one must not only do that, one must constantly reaffirm his faith lest he be judged here on Earth before The Day of Judgment comes around. Some of my Christian brethren have become Judge, Jury and Executioner in their zeal to win souls for Christ.

Do they not realise that it is counter-productive to promise hell if one does what one does everyday? Many are confident in their faith in the Almighty and see no reasons why they should proclaim it every time someone demands proof. They do their Christian duty and they live as they believe The Christ would have wanted them to live. They do not wear their Christianity in their sleeves but it is pretty apparent in the manner they carry themselves and how they do what they do. They too, it seems, are for hell because they are insufficiently demonstrative of the their faith. Is Christianity being used as a weapon even against Christians?

There is a cohort of self-confessed monitors in the Christian faith. It seems that their principal role in life is to keep tabs on who is not sufficiently Christian to go by that name. They monitor our words, our decisions, our relationships and even our food and drink. They comment on what we watch or read or listen to with a judgmental mien. They take time out of their busy schedules to harangue and hector to get us back on the "right" path. They refuse to accept that the stricture "judge not, lest you be judged" applies to them too. They are busy yanking out the speck in our eyes that they ignore the plank in theirs'. Theirs is a harsh Christianity, fundamentalist in the interpretation of scripture and absolute in its ruthlessness against the weaknesses of the flesh.

Many of them would scream bloody murder if the State attempted to regulate how, where and when they could worship, but they see nothing contradictory in using the machinery of the State, including the Constitution or the courts, to impose their religious interpretations of secular matters on the rest of the nation. Perhaps it is time that Christians took back their faith from those that would wish to use it as a weapon. It is time we went back to the fundamentals of our faith: brotherhood, family and social wellbeing. If we are to worship together for the good of not only the individual but of the State, then we should do so without purporting to stand in judgment of our weaker co-religionists. Instead, we should go out of our way to offer words of encouragement and help to those who have fallen short of the glory of God.

Kenyatta and Ruto do not represent our virtuous future.

We must resist the temptation to conflate the fates of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto at the ICC with the right of the peoples of Kenya to elect them on The Fourth. Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto are not barred from standing for elections. Neither the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission nor the High Court has found any basis, Constitutional or otherwise, to prevent them from offering themselves to the electorate on The Fourth. But the inherent dangers in conflating their indictments at the ICC with their candidacies at the next general election are exacerbated every time the impression is reinforced that their victory will be a declaration of their innocence by way of the "sovereign will of the people."

Those in the civil society who disingenuously claim that their indictments mean that they cannot beet the Chapter Six threshold must now hold their fire, unless they intend to plead their case at the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court of Kenya. Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto are merely accused persons, and after the recantation of the testimony of a key witness in Mr Kenyatta's case, he may yet be acquitted after trial at The Hague-based court. Both have continued to plea their innocence at every political rally, and, barring any instructions from the court, they are free to do so. With the ruling of the five-judge Bench, they are also free to prosecute their political campaign without fear of interference.

This is in no way an endorsement of their joint candidacy. Regardless of the outcome of the ICC trials, both are quite possibly unfit to lea. In a presidential race n which all candidates are flawed, their flaws are far too serious to be casually ignored simply because "their" people have made a choice. Despite their intelligence and obvious youthful vigour, they are yet to demonstrate that their plans for the nation are nothing more than an attempt to wind back the clock. Their campaign rhetoric betrays the fact that they too do not appreciate the difference between their travails at the ICC and their constitutional rights. Their daily attempts to link the Prime Minister and his acolytes to their legal troubles as part of a grand scheme to deny them power is a pointer to how they will govern and how they will apply themselves to the implementation of Kenya's barely three-years old Constitution. In short, they see the country as being in need of an all powerful presidency, sans checks and balances from Parliament or the reformist Judiciary.

Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto cut their political teeth at the feet of the Professor of Politics, Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. Kenyans are still coming to terms with the sclerosis that pervaded the government he bequeathed Mwai Kibaki in 2003. The lessons that the two took away from their classes with President Moi are lessons Kenyans should not have to survive a second time around. President Kibaki's was always going to be a transitioning presidency, marking time for when Kenyans would make a clean break with the perfidious and odious KANU past. The two represent that past and are ill-suited to the business of bringing Kenya finally out of the sins of its past and into the virtues of its future.

We still don't know what they will do.

What shape will the next government take? It is impossible to predict because of the fluid nature of political institutions. If there were strong political parties that voters had confidence in, then the line-ups of the various alliances and coalitions, not to mention of the go-it-alone outfits would have been revealed at least by November. But we don't, so we have to make do with what we can discern from the political tea leaves.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Deputy Prime Ministers Uhuru Kenyatta and Musalia Mudavadi, former Minister for Justice Martha Karua, former Assistant Minister Peter Kenneth and former Permanent Secretary James ole Kiyiapi have served in government under Mwai Kibaki, and in the case of the first four, in the government of Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. They have an inkling of how to organise an administration, though they may not appreciate that the dynamics have undergone a sea-change since the promulgation of the Constitution in 2010. They may not appreciate too that Parliament is not going to the pliant House they have been witness to in the past. The role of the Speaker, the Leaders and the party Whips will be crucial to getting the agenda of the Executive implemented, if not in full, substantially.

It is the role of Parliament in shaping the next government that we are blindest. There is no indication which party will have a majority or whether the ruling party will have a majority in Parliament. Many are persuaded that there will be a divided government in 2013; a party in charge of Parliament, and another in charge of the Executive. But if the ruling party has a majority in Parliament, its agenda may yet be implemented. The risks are in the history of Parliament, especially over the past decade. Ever since President Moi decided to share power with Parliament, in his own fashion, it has gotten bolder in the way it conducted business. For the most part, the Ninth and Tenth Parliaments were a disappointment; Parliamentary committees became weapons to be employed against the members of the Cabinet who refused to play ball with their chairs or members. The bitter war between the Defense and Foreign Relations Committee and the Minister for Foreign Affairs over the Japanese embassy scandal is a pointer to how difficult the relationship between the Executive and Parliament may get.

A new President will have to get his Cabinet Secretaries and Principal Secretaries approved by Parliament before he can govern. Once they have been approved and their appointments made, legislating the president's agenda may prove difficult in the first few months. No procedures have been agreed upon on how legislative proposals will be considered and how they will be shepherded in Parliament. The area of greatest contention is likely to revolve around the budget: if the two do not get along, the budget may be delayed, which may have knock-on impacts on the operations of the Executive, as on that of the devolved government.

From their performance in the Presidential Debate, the candidates dis not seem to appreciate that the Executive must partner with Parliament in order to succeed as an administration. Paul Muite, perhaps more than Mohammed Abduba Dida, failed to grasp this fact when he declared that he would go to war over Migingo Island and the Elemi Triangle. He forgot that a declaration of war could only proceed with the approval of Parliament. All of them had lofty ideas about education, security and healthcare; none of them considered that all appropriations would have to be made with the approval of Parliament. Even if they did not consider seriously the revenue-collection angle of the challenges they laid for themselves, surely it would have been helpful to address the manner in which they'd get their budgets approved by Parliament.

All in all, our presidential candidates seem to be living in a time warp, believing that the power of the presidency is sufficient to guarantee that the will succeed where they think Jomo Kenyatta, Moi or Kibaki has not. The reality, as always, is far more complex and complicated. Their refusal to share their detailed plans of how they will organise their administrations and how they will govern are cause for pause. It is really too bad we do not have smarter alternatives in the race.