During the burial of President John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson famously remarked: “I would give everything I have not to be standing here today”. In that moment of profound national grief, Johnson’s words underscored that compromise is a critical facet in leadership.
I want the people of Kenya to pose and ask, “what would William Ruto compromise for the sanity of the nation?” Last week alone we lost 31 lives. In a country that is not under foreign invasion, we lose tens of people every fortnight and we don’t hear the Commander-in-Chief grieve with the people.
Is there anything that the President could do for Kenya not to bleed as it has done in the last three years? Is he aware that in their misguided belief that they are defending his presidency, some clowns in princely robes are engaged in tribal rhetoric calculated at inflaming ethnic division and explosion? What are the national security hawks doing after the National Cohesion and Integration Commission’s revelation that 33 counties out of the 47 are already violence hotspots?
If Kenyans wanted the many unemployed young people to continue being hopeless, they would not have gone the UDA direction in the last election. It is therefore unpresidential for the President to say that we have always been unemployed. It is true, yes, but it’s precisely why so many people trusted him with their votes. Kenya has always been divided. But is he going to fold his hands and hope that there will still be a country when in his backyard we hear calls of ultra-ethnic nationalism? Since the President has enough sycophants, let’s be forthright. Whoever conceived and executed the terror campaign that the country has witnessed in the last one year let us all down. Violence as a tool in governance is used to protect the common wealth not to destroy it. The spate of abductions, forced disappearances, deaths cannot be the new law enforcement modus operandi. That is State-sanctioned terror plain and simple.
Increasingly, we have abandoned the doctrine of presumption of innocence, we have suspended the right to be heard, we have left in the hands of police officers, the power to determine if a suspect lives to see the next day or, in the words of the police spokesman, “hit his head on the wall” to death.
Apart from that, healthcare and education have been wobbling for far too long. In education, we have implemented a syllabus with little stakeholder involvement and many parents have gone along for lack of alternatives. The economy, which remains a thorn in the flesh of so many, is yet to receive the attention it deserves. These issues require immediate intervention.
But the political class is telling us that social services are falling apart because some ethnic group is entitled. They are telling us that their ethnic groups are more heroic than others. If that is not outright folly what is it? We must reject the near psychotic appetite to couch our national debate(s) through simplistic tribal lenses. Bullets don’t distinguish that this is a Luo or Kikuyu. A failed economy knows no Kalenjin or Luhya. Sickness knows no ethnicity.
So in the name of God, let us respond to the grievances of the youth without trivialising calls for accountability by engaging in tribal dog whistles. While problems of the economy might be structural and intractable, the President must rein in his people and put a stop to these killings. I make that direct plea because we all saw the National Assembly Committee on Defence, Intelligence and Foreign Committee chairperson speak as though he is junior member of Bunge la Wananchi in Jacaranda which is a mere parody of parliamentary proceedings with little to no consequence. The buck stops with the President. He must lead and not through violence.
Mr Kidi is the convener Inter-Parties Youth Forum. [email protected]
By Kidi Mwaga