he run-up
to the US presidential election in November is heating up. Key debates are
weeks away. The incumbent president Barrack Obama’s Democrat Party and his
challenger, Mitt Romney’s Republican Party are putting their best feet forward.
The looming televised debates have given all indications that they will be
explosive, centered on issues that are key to either retaining Obama in the
office or voting in Romney. Talk of issue-based politics. Polls are barely two
months away, yet they are not eating and sleeping politics as it happens in
Kenya! Welcome to politics the American way!
Fast
forward to Kenya, where elections are almost five months away yet the election
fever has gripped the entire nation! You might be forgiven to think that we are
going to the debe in a month’s time!
We are literally eating and sleeping politics! Town clerks, the government
spokesman, Permanent secretaries, ambassadors and other top civil servants have
all quit their posts and jumped into the murky waters of Kenyan politics. Politics are literally making Kenya move and
can effortlessly bring the country to a standstill! At this rate it may be not
too farfetched to say that the government might come to a standstill due to the
mass exodus of her civil servants! Presidential hopefuls have already launched
their countrywide campaigns and it is politics big-time.
It is
interesting to note how politicians, including the presidential hopefuls give
key issues like teachers’, university dons’ and doctors’ strikes a wide berth.
To them this is not a deal and the millions of innocent souls suffering direly
due to these strikes feature nowhere in their political ambitions. They have
literally promised to deliver heaven and you are left with a million questions
on how this heaven will be delivered! To them the millions of innocent souls
suffering direly due to these strikes feature nowhere in their political
ambitions. They have literally promised to deliver heaven if voted into office,
when they know too well that hell awaits Kenyans!
It is
hard to imagine how the same fellows will help cure Kenya of all these ills,
when they cannot publicly talk about the same and even push for ways to end
them. Whenever workers in the public sphere threaten industrial action to push
for better working conditions and better remuneration, the government must
always read these and engage the people with a view to mitigating the same.
However this will never happen in Kenya, a country whose political class has
been suffocated by too much politics. Issues are not key to these politicians!
In
the midst of an already charged political atmosphere, the weatherman has once again
warned us of impeding heavy rains in most parts of the country. Ignoring these
warning will be at our own peril and nature will wreck havoc instead of
bringing joy to our lives. Every other year, we are sure to have our brothers
and sisters in some part of this country starving to death and their treasured
livestock being reduced to carcasses. Ironically, it is the same country where
you get stream-fuls of milk flowing in some other part for the simple reason
that there are no storage facilities to hold this treasured commodity. When
some people are decrying the lack of storage facilities for their agricultural
produce and letting it go to waste, Kenyans in another part are starving to
death. Talk of extremes in a country! Whenever Kenyans in these parts are faced
with starvation, politicians are at it again, promising all manner of solutions
to mitigate this. Worse still, food aid meant for these starving Kenyans is
sure to entail some illegal under-the –table deals by our politicians. Scandals
are unearthed.
In the
run-up to the general elections, we have always had ethnic clashes in some part
of this country. We had the ugly Molo clashes of 92 and 97. No solid solution
to these was ever found, the matter was simply swept under the carpet. Barely a
year to the general elections and Tana Delta has literally been burning. More
than 100 lives lost, livestock stolen and slaughtered, property destroyed and
villages have been reduced to ashes. These clashes usually come and go, and our
brothers and sisters in these marginalized areas slaughter each other like
chicken! Our politicians, in the heat of the moment talk tough and create the
false impression that a solution is in the works!
But do
we have to wait until all these problems come up for short-term and mostly
unsuccessful solutions to be sought? This should not be the case, warning
should always be read and a way forward sought to avoid these embarrassing
troubles. Food insecurities, strikes and some primitive tribal and ethnic
clashes should not be allowed to define Kenya. We are much better than that.
Residents of this area have lived through hell. The government took its sweet
time before taking the decisive action of sending the tough General Service
Unit personnel to back-up an already overwhelmed police contingent. The
chilling revelations then point to political interests in a deadly conflict
that started as a fight over pasture and water resources between farmers and pastoralists.
As a
nation, we should cut down on our political consumption! We cannot just eat and
sleep politics as we have been doing. Politics cannot help us realize the
overly ambitious Vision 2030. It is indeed true that Kenya has some of the best
and unrivalled master plans to turning round the fortunes of her people. We are
now under a new constitution that if well implemented in the right political
environment can get us back on track to development. We must remember that Kenya’s
initial goals at independence; fighting poverty, diseases and ignorance are far
from being realized. They have taken a back foot at the expense of cheap
politics.
Cheap politics have
turned out to be our Achilles heel
