TOO MUCH POLITICKING!

T

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