As Christian all over the world gather in places of worship to reflect on the persecution, death and ascension of Christ, may we collectively as Kenyans take time to reflect on what must be our irreducible minimum in the next elections. Truth is, the folks who took over the reins of power after President Moi, have proven that modernity is certainly not synonymous with development. The political economy they have engendered might look modern but undeveloped.
Access to education continues to be a pipe-dream. The human rights record has plummeted to an all time low. Public anxiety around joblessness is at its peak while the political class continues to trade asinine barbs as though public leadership is some child’s play. If this is waht they think, I will remind them of Aesop’s wisdom in his fable the ‘Frog and the village boys’, where he says that what might be play to a pack of boys may mean death to a family of frogs.
Kenyans, like the good Lord, have been betrayed into the hands of economic Pharisees. The State has been hollowed out by private commercial interests that have repurposed it to serve narrow private interests while paying lip service to public interests. To blindside the people into mindless praise singing, the political class has deployed huge resources to redirect political discourse to focus on shadow boxing.
A case in point is when at a funeral a fortnight ago, Siaya Governor James Orengo pointed out that it’s not good judgment for the biggest opposition party to taper to the whims of the government of the day while still posturing as the bearer of the alternative viable political vision.
Mr Orengo was candid enough to point out that the broad-based government as presently constituted has between little to nothing to offer. The following week, there were coordinated attacks in the media against the governor. The Luo Nyanza Professionals had the temerity to threaten to orchestrate his impeachment. A very laughable threat. If they were professionals as they claimed, they would be privy to the wisdom of Voltaire when he says, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it”.
In coming out to threaten Orengo, the professionals were trying to stifle free speech. It fills me with trepidation in part because some of them have been gallivanting around town saying how they have fought for change in this country. What change if they have never spoken out for the many young people, women and children the State brutalised in the 2023 ‘cost of living protests’.
Let’s face it, what came to town after last elections as the ‘Kenya Kwanza’ administration is today deemed a monumental failure. The Hustler hype is gone. Governments ordinarily use taxes as a tool to preside over wealth redistribution not only to close the gap between the rich and the poor but also to give those left at the base of the pyramid a hand up.
However, in Kenya Kwanza’s wisdom, it is more prudent to give tax breaks to those importing choppers than the struggling street vendors who are unsure of their next meal.
A government that turns its back against the dispossessed masses is a government whose fate was articulated by Thomas Jefferson in the 18th Century when he pointed out in the Declaration of Independence that a government that becomes destructive to the ends of preserving right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness would meet the wrath of the people as they would alter such a government or abolish it altogether.
This brings me to the conversation about 2027. The contest must not be reduced to a duel between the hounds of prey of yester-years and their cousins of today running the State. To kick out the Gen Z abductors and replace them with the architects of ‘River Yala bodies’ would be, to borrow the words of Jeremy Bentham, nonsense upon stilts.
Mr Kidi is the convener of Inter Parties Youth Forum. [email protected]
By Kidi Mwaga